Love
by MisatoKitty
Summary: Oh dear, Ranma's dead. But wait, that's the end of the story. How does he get there? What the heck has been going on? Read on! Rating lowered because, really, this wouldn't get an R in cinemas even with the occasional violence :P
1. Love 1

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 1  
  
** Love Sucks **  
  
  
Two women, in their twilight years, sat on the porch of an old-style dojo as the sun headed down into its mid-afternoon position. Both sat, serenely, hands folded in their laps, staring out at times long-since past. Memories of people now gone, places now built over by concrete and steel, enemies that were now as infirm as they themselves. Memories of smells long dead in the world, such as daisies and roses, of rain on dirt and dry cement, the smells of a partner in the heat of passion. Noises, too, were missing. Those of children playing, cars, trains, and birds. It was the birds that the silver-haired woman missed most, with children a close second.  
  
She turned to her companion, who despite her advancing years, still had a head full of magnificent red hair. The other was sitting silent, still, motionless... yet poised, as only a lifetime of service to ancient, now dead, arts could entice one to sit. The silver-haired woman knew the other still practised, still taught - it was one of the specialties of her generation that they attempted to continue. She knew, for example, that Xian Pu had attempted to continue the arts of the Amazons after the Indo-Chinese Conglomerate had bulldozed and plasma-bathed the village to make way for new multi-level cities. But, like most of the others, Xian Pu was gone now, too.  
  
The other finally turned, noticing the gaze of her companion, or perhaps only now deigning to acknowledge it. "It has been a while since we were all last together."  
  
"Those of us that remain," replied the first.  
  
"Yes." The redhead fell silent again. Not for the first time, the first felt jealous of the other, jealous of her ability to hide from the wrinkles that time wrought.  
  
"What does the future hold for us?"  
  
The redhead was silent for a time. Then: "The future... ahhhh, my old, dear friend. We won't be around to see it. Well, much of it. And you should be glad of that. This world we live in now," she gestured to the north, where NeoTokyo was taking place, growing up in kilometres-high spirals and towers, "will get worse."  
  
"Maybe you made the wrong choice. You know, about what you said to that Setsuna girl."  
  
The redhead shook her head. "Nope. That we're all sure of. Perfect peace and happiness? Must be fought for. Mistakes must be made for us to learn. I learnt a lot from her friends."  
  
The silver-haired woman turned to the sun again. "I remember."  
  
"All you remember of that time was how I hurt you."  
  
"I remember more than that. I... I just... it has been a while."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
The two were silent, regarding each other and the environment around them. In the distance was a belch of fire. The sound took a number of seconds to reach them, and when it arrived, it was a low, dull rumble, like a distant earthquake. The redhead cocked her head to one side, listening intently. "The planet can't take much more of this."  
  
"The overpopulation?"  
  
"Everything. It is going off like that even more often now than before. Thankfully, people are beginning to notice. But too slow."  
  
Both nodded sagely. Then the redhead looked down between them. A Go board lay there, pieces arranged in battle from the last, final game, aged and weathered. To both women, it meant so much, the pieces arranged like this. Both of their fathers had perished in the spots they now occupied, the Go board between them. This last game lay forever unfinished. The redhead reached down, picked up one of the pieces, turned it over and over in her fingers. "If only they'd taken up another hobby. Something less dangerous. Like playing tennis with live grenades or something."  
  
"I know how you feel," said the silver-haired woman. "It's like they both should still be here. I feel them sometimes. My abilities are lapsing as I grow older. I can barely pick up a ki signature now, let alone differentiate them. And I feel them from time to time." She paused. "I feel all of them."  
  
"You're the last now, Akane."  
  
"I'm so lonely, Ranma. I'm the third one."  
  
The redhead put the piece back down, and moved over to her friend's other side, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her into an embrace. "You're very welcome to come stay with Hotaru and I, you know. We'd love to have you."  
  
"You've heard about the dojo, then."  
  
"The demolishing? Yeah. Come on, our place is always yours. You know that."  
  
"Ranma?" Akane looked up, eyes glistening with small drops of water. "Ranma? Can you tell me a story? Of how it was before it all got so bad and dark? Before everyone was dead?"  
  
"You want me to continue on from where I got up to last time we were together?" Ranma asked, and Akane nodded. "Okay, then. You know, every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. This is the middle... but I'm going to start at the end of it, tell you where it went to before I tell you how it got there."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"To make it more interesting."  
  
"Oh, okay..."  
  
"So. We're talking about love, aren't we? So let's pick it up from there. Love. My first sexual experience. Nervous, knowing I shouldn't be doing this, feeling so wrong, so bad... and yet it was so good."  
  
******  
  
And then, at the moment of release, Ranma's head exploded and he toppled lifelessly onto Mitsuki. She blinked, once, automatically wiping the bone fragments and brain portions from her eyes, heedless of the numerous small injuries to her face caused by chips of bone, then started screaming.  
  
******  
  
Usagi heard the screaming, woke with a start. Her clock said it was 2AM, definitely not the time for screaming. She pulled her pillow over her head, tried to go back to sleep. But Obviously Mitsuki was having a great time with whatever guy she'd dragged home... wait, Mitsuki hadn't gone out... oh no...  
  
She bolted from her bed, headed out the door for the stairs. The other senshi on the second floor were beginning to poke their heads out of doors, and at the bottom of the stairs, outside of Ranma's room, was Hotaru, looking inside with a look of complete and utter shock on her face, her skin a paler shade of alabaster than normal. She stepped back, shaking her head slowly, hesitantly. "No, no, he'd never -" she said, before Usagi reached her, pulled her away from the door so she could have a look herself.  
  
One glance was enough to confirm her worst fears: a naked Mitsuki lying under a blood-soaked Ranma.  
  
But... there was a gap where his neck and head should have been. Like something was missing.  
  
That was about when Usagi noticed the stains on the walls, red, grey, white. His head had just... exploded. She turned to one side quickly and vomited the contents of her stomach up just as the other senshi reached the doorway. There was a shocked silence.  
  
Then several other stomachs evacuated meals from earlier. Hotaru slid down the wall, holding herself, screaming and sobbing at the same time, making a weird hiccupping sound. Mitsuki continued to scream inside the room, as if she was a child, woken up from a bad dream. Usagi felt like that herself.  
  
Ami changed into her senshi form, bringing down her visor to check the room through the safety and slight removal from reality this offered her. Streams of numbers and characters scrolled past her eyes and she worked the whole room over. Her glance fell on a packet of pills next to the bed, and she almost glanced away again, until numbers in red started flashing. There was a reaction in them, something bad. Something dangerous. Dark Kingdom dangerous.  
  
But would a monster inhabit the pills of a person suffering multiple personality disorder? No, likely not. Which meant, most likely, that this was a secondary effect of something.  
  
Mercury gave a start as she remembered Ranma asking her something a while ago, something about a powder that was supposed to do something to him or to the senshi. She'd scanned him, and found a small parasitic spore form of a Dark Kingdom monster. She had thought she had removed it... but obviously not. Perhaps it was still gestating in him now, because the energy signature from the pills was the same as she'd found on Ranma. Yet, his body showed no trace of it. Strange. She took Hotaru and Usagi aside, dragged Makoto along too to take care of the younger senshi while she tried to talk to Usagi, tell her what she'd found.  
  
"But... but she blew his head up!"  
  
"Not her," Mercury said again, trying to keep bile down and her tone level. "Understand that. She had a bad reaction to a Dark Kingdom monster. A spore that infected her medication." She continued to explain, until most of the senshi were around her, listening to her calming words. One by one, they realised what had happened. One by one, their anger and shock turned to pity, to sorrow, and to compassion. They all knew of Mitsuki's problems. They knew she'd been taking her medication religiously for the last six months. They knew, too, that for some reason, Ranma had been more and more attracted to her of late. That had the effect of making Hotaru a little more insistant for his time and attention, but no one had thought it would come to this. And with her medication tampered with... well, there were very destructive personalities within Mitsuki's head. She did her best to keep them contained, and Ranma had been trying to help her with them... but still...   
  
And while they knew she was responsible, they found that they couldn't blame her.  
  
Police were called, statements made, photos taken. Then the body was removed. They wouldn't have believed that Mitsuki could have exploded Ranma's head, and they were certain no one else in the house could have done it... so they left with no further action taken against the young women.  
  
And so, when Hotaru stopped crying, and dried her eyes, while Makoto and Minako helped clean Mitsuki off, Hotaru said, "Someone has to tell his family and friends." And she stood up, walked out of the dorm, in the early hours of the morning.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru walked the streets of Nerima, and felt a presence behind her. Familiar, comforting. Like an old friend, wrapping an arm around her, drawing her into a tight hug, kissing the top of her head. She turned, but nothing. For a moment, using the techniques Ranma had taught her, she thought it was her boyfriend, her sensei... her former boyfriend, her ex-sensei, she reminded herself. He was gone now, paint on the walls in his room. She felt her eyes tear up, and once more, she wiped savagely at them as she had done several times since leaving the Ai Sou.  
  
A few minutes later, she felt another familiar presence behind her. She turned, quicker this time, to see Tatewaki Kuno behind her, hand on his bokken. "These early hours before school times are not a safe time for a Goddess such as your fair self to be traversing through," he said. "For there are many dangers that -" Kuno shut up suddenly as a bike tyre impacted on his head, bounced, and the Chinese girl riding it make an excellent landing on the road in front of him.   
  
"Aiya! Stupid speech-boy get out of Shampoo's way! Shampoo -"  
  
A chain whistled through the air behind the Amazon, and she turned, grabbing it, pulling Mousse into view. "Wah! Shampoo! Do not run from the fates of love!"  
  
"Shampoo not running! Shampoo biking! Very fast!"  
  
"Shampoo! The Amazon Elders have confirmed it! We must mar-" Mousse got no further, for the chain he had sent hurtling at Shampoo flew back at him, wrapped around his neck and choked him tight. He fell to the ground gasping, grabbing for the chain to loosen it enough to breath. Shampoo made good her escape, noting that the girl had left the area already and was heading for the Tendo residence. That wasn't good. Shampoo hadn't recognised her at first... but she did now. She had been there that time she had nearly been killed, been with her Ranma. And she had been there other times, too, as well as attending Furinken High. This wouldn't be good. Curious, she pedalled after the younger girl.  
  
"Why strange girl go see Tendo's?" she asked, curious.  
  
Hotaru didn't so much as glance in Shampoo's direction. "Gather your friends. All of them. Everyone who knew Ranma. Get them to the Tendo Dojo before I get there." She didn't slow down, just kept moving steadily towards her destination. Shampoo glanced even more curiously at the girl's face, then decided something felt really wrong about this situation, and did as she had been asked.  
  
******  
  
Everyone was gathered within the dojo's hall in record time. The strange girl whom everyone had seen around or knew personally in some cases was standing towards the front.  
  
When Akane entered, the girl, Hotaru, stiffened slightly. Akane wondered what was going on, and why no one was attacking her, especially after everything she'd done, both to Ranma, to Nabiki, to her. She could see Nabiki was chomping at the bit to cause a fight here... she had never gotten over that betrayal. Another Tendo sister hurt by Ranma.  
  
Although that wasn't completely true, Akane reflected. He had done the best he could to disentangle them with their friendship intact, she had to admit that. He had tried to make everything right, and he'd taken the blame for the split, even though somewhere deep down, Akane knew she'd been a large part of the cause. Ranma had still helped out when he could, even though he didn't have to. He obviously considered her to be a friend... a very good friend, at that. He'd helped out with Kasumi, kept that quiet, made the others keep quiet. And while Akane was still angry, she knew that was because she was still hurting.  
  
What she felt was strange was that Hotaru had called everyone together. Absolutely everyone. Ukyou and Shampoo were huddled over near Cologne. Happosai was brooding with suspicious bulges in his pockets, wanting to bond with his new haul of panties, but curiousity was too much for him. Or something. Akane found she didn't like the look on his face. Or Cologne's, for that matter. Kasumi served drinks with a smile, but she was quiet. Nabiki glared at Hotaru. Ryoga stood nearby with Kuno's hand clamped to his shoulder to stop him from going anywhere. Kuno's sister, Kodachi, was also nearby, dressed in a dress for a change. Even Miss Hinako was there, glaring at all the delinquints around her, without her being able to do anything about it. And her father and Ranma's were sitting behind them all, staring out the back forlornly at their Go board, wanting desperately to get into a game.  
  
It wasn't until the door slid open one final time that Hotaru looked up, sadly. Akane wondered at that, and turned to see who had just entered. Nodoka Saotome, Ranma's mother.  
  
It was then that Akane knew this was going to be bad. Hotaru's next words confirmed that.  
  
"Ranma Saotome... is dead."  
  
******  
  
The grief hit everyone in different ways. Akane felt like she'd been punched in the stomach, and sank to her knees. While she pretended she didn't care much for him, she did love Ranma. She knew that they wouldn't be able to stay together... but she did love him still. And she wanted to see him one last time to tell him that, to his face. Not through innuendo, not through actions, through three simple words.  
  
******  
  
Ryoga's first thought was, Now Akane is free! Then the words impacted properly, and he found himself staring into space, half a grin on his face, that drooped slowly into a frown, then a shocked expression as his shocked-into-immobility brain fought to catch up. It failed. His rival for affections, his rival for love... his best friend, now and forever... was gone for good.  
  
******  
  
Kuno had expected something of this when he had observed the people turning up. Yet, no doubt, they would not be as emotionally strong as he, and would need someone to show them how to handle their grief. He stood, tall, in an actual heroic pose, honouring the fallen foe and comrade in arms in the manner of a warrior. Yet a tear glistened at the corner of his eye. His sister clung to his shoulder and cried, but Kuno felt that was more for the fact one of her playthings was now beyond her. He wrapped an arm around Kodachi, held her tight. Maybe now she could heal from abuses long-since past. Maybe now, he could, too.  
  
******  
  
Shampoo nodded gravely. She, also, had expected as much. She comforted Ukyou while Cologne closed her eyes and contemplated. The loss of Ranma's genes for the Amazon tribe was a great loss. She had hoped that he would return to Nerima, but as time passed... and as the conflicts between the people training under her and those under Ranma grew... she had known somewhere that he would never marry Shampoo. This girl in front of them would have been the one. She opened her eyes to find Hotaru looking directly at her.  
  
"We will talk. Soon," Hotaru promised. And right then, Cologne knew, somehow, she was responsible for Ranma's death.  
  
******  
  
Genma continued to stare dumbly at the young girl, Nodoka at his side. Then Soun burst into tears. Nodoka took the news stoicly, then spoke. "I assume you will return his body for funeral arrangements?"  
  
Hotaru shook his head. "I would like to arrange them, if I may, Mrs Saotome. Although everyone is invited."  
  
Nodoka considered this. "That would be good. I... am sorry. For your loss."  
  
"Not merely mine."  
  
Nodoka nodded. "True. And thank you. For informing us yourself." She paused. "May I see the body?"  
  
Hotaru looked slightly green at that suggestion, and shook her head. "I'd rather you remember him as in life, than as he is now."  
  
"This is also sound advice, but I fear... I must see the body."  
  
Hotaru nodded. "I'll arrange it with the hospital. But the funeral will have to be a closed-casket one. He'll be cremated afterwards. The ashes... will go to you and your husband."  
  
"Thank you." Nodoka bowed slightly.  
  
******  
  
Happosai was quiet in his corner. "Ranma's dead." Never again would he feel those soft, luscious breasts, never again would he be able to steal his panties or bras... or swimwear... never again would he see that bright chirpy face... never again... "Oh, Ranma..."  
  
******  
  
Everyone in the room shivered, feeling something. Those more aware... turned to stare at each other dumbly. The ki signature was very familiar.  
  
But everyone passed it off as a weakness of grief, feeling a loved one close to oneself.  
  
After all, people didn't return from the dead.  
  
Ranma Saotome didn't walk this Earth any longer.  
  
******  
  
The funeral was held several days later. All of Ranma's friends from Nerima showed up in formal dress, apart from Kuno, who honoured his fallen comrade in a battle uniform from the kendo club with a troop of kendoists behind him, also in uniform at attention. His family, likewise, showed, Nodoka standing tall and proud and firm, honouring the memory of her son, the man known as Ranma Saotome.  
  
On the other side of the casket were the senshi, Mitsuki standing behind them, the saddest and most upset of the lot. Some wondered why she was so upset, looking so guilty. From what they had heard, it had to be some mighty fierce warrior who had killed their former friend, not this purple-haired woman. Hotaru stood slightly apart from the others, in between the senshi and the Tendo family. Soun's tears threatened to put everyone to shame.  
  
Akane noticed the girl standing slightly apart from her friends, and moved to stand beside her. Her hand gripped Hotaru's. "No hard feelings," she said, throat choking closed on her as the younger girl looked up, upset. "I mean... you know... with Ranma. I was... stupid -"  
  
"No, you weren't," Hotaru said. "But there's time for that later. For now... thanks for the company."  
  
Akane nodded kindly, and turned back to the simple ceremony Hotaru had organised. She noticed a blond-haired man enter the parlour and stand behind the Nerima crowd. He was dressed in a black suit, but with a white shirt underneath, and a light blue tie. He wore black gloves on both hands, and kept his eyes on the casket. Akane noticed Hotaru had seen him when her hand suddenly clamped down hard on Akane's. She'd have to find out what that was about afterwards.  
  
But for now, the celebrant cleared his throat, and began to speak.  
  
******  
  
The funeral passed quickly for Hotaru. She had noted Yoshihiro standing opposite before the celebrant had started, and his eyes had been rooted to the casket, as if he hadn't really believed that Ranma could be dead. When the celebrant had finished, and eulogies had been completed for Ranma, the crowd mingled. Hotaru tried to look for Yoshihiro, but he had that nasty habit of fading into crowds. She wasn't sure if he'd left or not yet. That wasn't good.  
  
What was worse was when she turned around to check if any of the other senshi had noticed him, and found him smiling down at her. "Child," he said, "Why so down? This is a time of reflecting on the good moments of his passing."  
  
"What are you doing here?" Hotaru threw at him, angrily.  
  
"Honouring a fallen foe."  
  
"That's a lie!"  
  
"Is it? Or perhaps you'd feel better if I told you I was here making sure he was really dead. You know, because I'm this all-powerful 'bad guy', and he was the only one of you with perhaps enough power and skill to defeat me. Perhaps." Yoshihiro shrugged. "But I really did come to pay my respects to the dead."  
  
"You'd have us all dead," Hotaru snarled, "if you had your way!"  
  
"Of course. But it wouldn't be through underhandedness, would it? I don't like all that sneaking about. It's what got Natsumi into trouble in the first place." Yoshihiro paused, turned to the casket. "But Ranma is gone now. A pity, I no longer feel I have a challenge here."  
  
"A challenge?" Mitsuki spoke from behind Yoshi, and he half-turned to note the senshi were standing behind him, angry at this intrusion into their day-to-day lives. "All of us together, we're more than a match for you. Dark Kingdom scum!" She spat at him. Rei moved slightly to one side. The other senshi took her lead, spread out, ready to engage the enemy.  
  
"Scum? I think not. Royalty, perhaps, your better, definitely. Single-minded?" He directed a grin at Mitsuki, who fumed. "Of course."  
  
The room had by now fell silent, aware there was something going on. Those with the ability to detect ki noticed some interestnig patterns forming in the room, knew there was about to be a big fight. And they also readied themselves, somehow innately aware that the man the girls Ranma had lived with were facing off against was an enemy.  
  
Yoshihiro snorted. "Truly. None of you pose a threat to me whatsoever."  
  
A voice behind him said, "Oh? Is that so?"  
  
******  
  
Ranma fell silent in her recounting of the story, remembering. "And that was the end of the middle. It was a long story. It was a hard and painful story. But that was when it got better for us all. We all found our centres after that moment, that one indefinable moment that everyone had. The sense of doing right. Justice. Good. Yoshihiro in his way... was a force for good. A driving force behind evolution of the species. We will get there one day, Akane... one day. Because of that moment. A moment of love."  
  
Akane smiled, remembering the moment. "You're growing sappy in your old age."  
  
"And you enjoy fairy tales too much for my liking." Ranma stood suddenly. "I'm sorry, Akane. I've... I've got to go."  
  
Akane nodded, distant, still in happy memories of when her sisters were alive. Ranma left, sliding the partition doors to the patio closed as she went inside.  
  
Akane turned, feeling a presence behind her. "Ranma?"  
  
The young Ranma she knew oh so very well, the male Ranma, crouched there, smiling his crooked smile. "Heya, Akane. How's things?"  
  
"They're not... as good as they used to be."  
  
"I can see. I know."  
  
"I... know why you're here."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
"You're dead, aren't you?"  
  
"At the moment," Ranma conceeded. "Being dead... well, it's different. You get to like it."  
  
"I'll get to like it before you, you mean."  
  
Ranma nodded. "Sorry, Akane. But it's time."  
  
"Yes."  
  
And the years melted away. Akane stood before Ranma then, as young as he appeared. "I suspected as much. You... always knew things after that day."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And you knew things today."  
  
Ranma merely nodded. Then he gestured to the doors behind him. "Akane - it's time. Your mother... your father... Kasumi... Nabiki... Shampoo... the others. They're all in there, waiting for you."  
  
Akane stepped towards the door, then hesitated. She turned back, stormed up to Ranma, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly, passionately, hotly. She pulled back, looking down at her feet. "I'm sorry, Ranma. I... had to do that. Once." She looked up. "I do love you, you know. I always did. I didn't mean to push you away like I did."  
  
Ranma stopped her with a finger to her lips. "Shush. I know, Akane. I love you, too. And now... now... go on. Through the door. Be with your family, where you belong."  
  
She nodded, and this time, there was no hesitation as she strode through the door.  
  
Into the greatest love of all.  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Gah. I hate computer crashes. Well, six weeks without a computer is character-building... according to my parents. I know that to be a crock from experience ;)  
  
This is the first part of Love, the second arc from my Ranma/Sailor Moon/Love Hina crossover fic. It tells of the end of this arc, actually, as you might have noticed. I hope you enjoy what leads up to it... I enjoyed writing this. A lot. Surprising, really. One good thing about the six weeks it took to get me a new computer is that I had been discarding ideas for this arc willy-nilly, and it let me get some ideas in line for this arc's story in toto...  
  
As always, feel free to email me with comments, queries, etc. I can also be found on IRC, on dalnet servers, #anime channel from time to time. I'm Misato__Katsuragi (long story, but it's where all my Misato's come from).  
  
Anyway, next chapter, picking up from the beginning. I've got a lot of ground to cover this arc, as you might notice. Oh, I do so hate hard drive crashes that take *everything* with them! All my notes went with it :( 


	2. Love 2

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 2  
  
** L'amour Impossible **  
  
  
"Ooooh! Look!" Hotaru stepped away from Ranma easily enough. The poor red-headed girl was exhausted. Once upon a time, Ranma had carried Hotaru up and down the stairs in front of the Ai Sou, where they lived, but at the current time, Ranma was feeling a little... drained.  
  
The younger girl turned back to face her friend, gesturing at a CD stand. "Megumi Hayashibara's got a new single out!"  
  
Ranma snorted; in his girl-form it came out higher pitched than even he had thought it would. "Megumi Hayashibara. Her voice is too squeaky and you can't take her seriously as a voice actress. She'd better not try anything other than comedy."  
  
Hotaru pouted. "Sempai, just because you're a bit sensitive about being stuck in your... uh, girl form for a while doesn't mean you can just act nasty and snide all the time."  
  
No, it didn't, and Ranma had to admit that. Hotaru was being as cheerful as she could - and while it was very obviously false to anyone who knew her well enough, Ranma did appreciate the effort. He said as much to the girl, whose alabaster cheeks seemed to glow a subtle pink with the kind words. Definitely something Ranma had been missing on giving the poor girl for a while.  
  
It had been three days now since he had woken up, three days since he found the girls he lived with now knew the truth about his curse. While he wanted to change back to his normal form, Hotaru had nixed the idea, saying that the damage he'd sustained in battle was very great and she almost hadn't been able to help him at all. When Ranma fell silent and checked his ki, he'd found he had almost emptied himself dry helping the senshi. Indeed, even then, a week after the event, healed by Hotaru, he'd only just recovered enough of his life energies to regain consciousness.  
  
The day before, he'd done his best to get out of bed, prove Hotaru wrong about her diagnosis. He had managed to hobble around the dormitory, but hadn't been able to climb stairs at all, and had been as weak as a kitten. Indeed, Usagi knocked him down in the kitchen by throwing open the fridge door a little too fast on the way for a snack. Hotaru had promised to take him into town the next day if he was feeling better. He was - still too weak to risk a transformation, but feeling well enough to try and tackle the stairs to the road.  
  
That was an ordeal in itself. Ranma now had a better appreciation of how Hotaru had found things before his training had begun to strengthen her ever so slightly. In her transformed state, she could easily overpower him in a straight-out slugfest, but Ranma held the upper hand in skill and experience. Or so he liked to believe. It was the only one of two conclusions he had made during their sparring matches that he accepted - the other was that she was holding back for fear of hurting him. Much more of a blow to Ranma's ego, that one.  
  
The walk into town had been tough, but by now, Ranma was mostly fine. The exercise and eating returned his strength and vitality to him, and he could walk fine enough now, without having to be helped. He had been spared that embarrassment in public, at least. He thought he might be okay to try a transformation back to his normal body in a day or two, but was't going to push it. If he continued recovering at the rate he was thus far, then he might give it a go. But if he plateaued, if he levelled out, he'd give it some more time.  
  
At least he no longer thought of his female form as the curse he once had - it was very useful at times. And comfortable at others. He touched Hotaru's arm as he reached her. "I'm hungry again. Let's find something to eat."  
  
******  
  
"Hungry again?" Hotaru asked, disbelieving. He nodded, and they found a small street cart to buy and eat instant ramen from.  
  
She'd already watched Ranma put away four big-sized meals today... and it wasn't even lunch time yet. In addition to that, he'd had numerous in-between snacks. She guessed it was something to do with replenishing his energy, similar to the recommendations when she'd had a series of blood tests years ago, when she'd had her 'problems', around the time she first met Usagi, that one should eat and drink a large meal afterwards, to help replenish the blood in her body.  
  
Yet Ranma had put away enough to feed a small African country, and still looked hungry.  
  
No wonder he could harness such energies when he needed to; the man was a checmical powerhouse.  
  
She could feel Ranma's life force building within him again, like a rare flower unfolding in a myriad of intricate patterns, ever faster, always rushing to catch those all-too-brief summer rays of light. She was attuned to injured people in some way, she'd found a long time ago, but now... she seemed to be finding ways of feeling people without seeing them, without touching them. She suspected that was part of Ranma's teachings, but it wasn't something he'd covered, apart from a few blindfolded lessons with her, Rei and Mitsuki to teach them about listening for an opponent's moves and actions.  
  
It was something she'd have to bring up.  
  
She could feel Ranma's presence, burning stronger and stronger with every passing minute, especially when he ate, and could detect small puffs of energy and life passing around behind and beside her - ordinary people, going about ordinary lives.  
  
Then something made her hair stand on end. A light, burning bright, at least as strong as Ranma used to be. At least. She suspected the sensation she was receiving diminished with distance. She turned, regardless, to see if she could see who was filled with such energy. But all she could see were normal people, heads down, leading their normal lives.  
  
And one tall blond man, slightly foreign looking, standing on the other side of the street, looking up at the sky. As she continued to stare, she felt that this man was the source of the energy, and as she watched, he slowly turned his head to look at her directly.  
  
She felt a rush of something within her, moments later decided it had to be hormones or something similar as she felt intensely attracted to the handsome stranger. His clothes were dark, but casual rather than the formal of most twenty-something males currently on the street. His face was pleasant, his eyes easy and reassuring, his nose straight and chin strong. He nodded, almost imperceptibly at her, then turned back to the skies above, staring as if he'd never seen them before.  
  
Hotaru's knees felt weak.  
  
Ranma stopped slurping up his ramen, and turned to Hotaru. "What's up? You're quiet."  
  
"Oh... uh, nothing," she blushed. "Nothing at all, sempai. It's just..." She turned back to the street to spot the mysterious handsome man, but he had vanished. She turned back to Ranma. "Nothing."  
  
"Okay." He continued to eye her in that way of his when he knew she wasn't telling the truth, but wouldn't call her on it, leaving her her privacy. It was something he was very good at, letting others keep their secrets. Something to do with his personal code of honour or something, she hypothesised.  
  
Meanwhile, she continued to sip at her drink, waiting for Ranma to finish so she could be cheerful and chirpy again. Quite how Usagi did this all day long, every day, Hotaru didn't know. Or would Minako be the one to ask? Who knew? Not Hotaru. It was very draining, being nice and happy all the time. Well, being nice was what she was like all the time, she felt, but occasionally she snapped at people, acted in a sneaky manner, among other things.  
  
And it had been just over a week since she'd attended Furinken High. That made her wonder what schemes Nabiki Tendo had gotten up to while she had been gone. Without Hotaru around, the young senshi would find it hard to counter anything she had done before it involved Ranma. That powder that Nabiki used on Ranma a month or so ago was a surprise that Hotaru didn't think she could afford again. Yet she didn't know what it did. Ami hadn't been able to determine anything about it, and pondered whether it would do anything at all. Hotaru hadn't found anything physically wrong with Ranma, so maybe that powder was suppose dto do soemthing natural, if anything at all. A laxitive or something.  
  
She shrugged; this afternoon, she'd have to attend the school, to get her notes for the previous week and to catch up on Nabiki's plans. That was a definite. IF she could Ranma home first.  
  
Noticing that Ranma was finished, she stood up. Ranma followed suit.  
  
"Ranma, why -"  
  
Ranma held a hand up. "Hotaru, stop." She obliged. "It's so nice of you to want to cheer me up. Really. But, uh, you know, you've got things to do. Like school for instance! And I've got things to do. I've gotta get back in shape. I've gotta get my body back the way it was. I've missed a week, over a week, of training - that's not good. I've got to start getting back into my routine, and you've got to get back into yours."  
  
"Ranma, I *like* looking after you!"  
  
"I know, Hotaru-chan, and I like you looking after me, believe me," Ranma sighed. "But... c'mon, you gotta get back into your life, too. You gotta go to school, you gotta train - and how can you train properly if your teacher isn't able to move?" He snorted.  
  
Hotaru had to admit, he had a point. The more she looked after him, the more both would be tempted to forget about their outside lives. Or so it seemed to her. Maybe it was a residual hormone surge from seeing that man, but she leaned forward and kissed Ranma on the lips. Ranma acted a little shocked, but wasn't going to pull away.  
  
******  
  
Two kids stopped and stared at the two girls kissing in front of the ramen stand. One turned to the other and said, "See, Hiroshi, what did I tell you? It's a good luck charm."  
  
Hiroshi growled under his breath.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru waved goodbye to Ranma and walked away. Ranma turned back to the ramen stand to get his breath back. That had been some kiss... and he hadn't wanted it to end, either. But he had some examining to do that he didn't want Hotaru around for. He'd felt the energy spike behind him a whole lot clearer than Hotaru had, and he had much more control over his body and emotions than she had... yet even he himself had been slightly attracted to the source of power. Like the relentless pull of gravity surrounding a major planet, he likened it to. He felt it with the senshi, even when they were in their unpowered forms, an attraction that pulled at him. With Hotaru, he had let the attraction pull him to her, and let his own personality and humour pull her to him. If something was going to happen between them, it would, and it would damned well happen naturally.  
  
He'd felt the way Hotaru had reacted, and felt a pang of jealousy. Yet he couldn't blame her for her reaction; the person who was throwing out that kind of energy was extremely powerful, more so than Hotaru had noticed. He was also tending towards the darker side of nature, like these Dark Kingdom creatures Ranma had faced off against with the senshi at his side. Yet, in his condition, he doubted he could have blocked a punch, let alone a projected ki blast, and he hadn't made a move to boost his own power levels faster or prepare for combat. He'd remained as if completely oblivious to it all. Hotaru hadn't picked up on the likely affiliation of the man; but that was okay. He trusted her not to do anything stupid, like try and follow him.  
  
He hoped, anyway.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru walked along a concreted drainage stream, thinking quietly to herself about how she would present her absence to Nabiki Tendo. Perhaps the 'flu might be a good excuse, or some other illness - God knew, Hotaru Tomoe had been inflicted with enough illnesses over her lifetime. Possibly even a pulled muscle, a strain, or a dead relative.  
  
Or perhaps... no, she blushed at that thought. As far as Nabiki apparently thought, Hotaru lvied with her strict parents. Managing to sneak her boyfriend over for one day might be believable, but for over a week? Not likely.  
  
She had a hand on the chain-link fence as she walked when she heard something. It sounded like a cat's nervous cries for help. She peered through the fence, and there, just up a little, beside a hole in the mesh, was a cat, a slightly off-white colour with purple tufts of fur on its head. Beside the hole was a bike, and in the distance, fast moving away, was a cloud of dust and smoke being whipped up by what Hotaru assumed to be some of the Nerima people she had been meeting.  
  
The cat was hanging into a branch just below the hole in the fence, and was wet and bedraggled, struggling to hold on as the branch slipped further and further from the fence and closer towards the gushing stream below. There was panic in its eyes and tension in its body.  
  
"Hello, kitty," Hotaru called, lying her bag next to the concrete abutment the fence sat on and poking her head and shoulders slowly through the fence. "Come here, come on" she continued, holding out her hands.  
  
The cat tried to swipe at a hand, but was too far away. The branch slipped further down towards the water.  
  
Hotaru leaned further through the fence, finally resting her knees on the concrete to reach in as far as she could. "Here kitty, kitty," she called again. The cat took one look at Hotaru's now-within reach arms, and fled up them, scratching and clawing as she went.  
  
The girl was surprised - a knee slipped, and she went through the fence herself now, as the cat made it through onto the road next to the bike. It made a sound almost like a raspberry, Hotaru thought, as she now clutched to the unsteady branch.  
  
The branch shifted again, groaning under the new, much heavier weight. It bent. Hotaru righted herself, turning so she now faced the hole in the fence, and tried to reach upwards, to grab the fence. But the branch slipped, and her feet splashed into the water. It gave a little more, and as Hotaru tried one last time to reach safety, the branch snapped just above her hands, and both halves fell into the water, taking the girl with them.  
  
While the stream wasn't terribly wide - only a few metres at most - it wasn't shallow, and the water was moving rather fast. The current swept at Hotaru, and the girl's body didn't offer much resistance. She tried putting some effort into swimming, but wasn't strong enough to make it. She opened her mouth to activate her transformation, and swallowed a mouthful of water.  
  
It was only the first. More quickly followed, and then her vision was obscured as the water closed over her. She thought she saw something -  
  
- something big, something dark, hovering over the water -  
  
******  
  
So, where was this guy? Ranma was searching through the streets in the direction he'd felt the man head towards, but could find no trace of his energies. He had to be around somewhere. And it's not like a tall foreigner could hide so easily in a mostly Japanese community, on a purely visual level. He had to be here somewhere.  
  
Instead of finding his target, though, he felt a surge of the dark energy he associated with Dark Kingdom monsters erupt from a side alley he was passing, and when he looked down -  
  
******  
  
Lips.  
  
Soft, tender, yet insistant and powerful.  
  
Giving her new life.  
  
Hotaru coughed, and the lips disappeared. She opened her eyes, and saw light, streaming down from above. A man's shadow leaning over her.  
  
Complete and utter silence.  
  
And a smell.  
  
A brief flutter, like those of a bird's wings, and the man was gone in a swirl of light from above, heading off in the direction of the sun so she couldn't make out any features.  
  
But she saw one thing.  
  
He had blond hair.  
  
She sat up, unable to move after him. There were footsteps behind her, angry footsteps, and she turned to face them. Shampoo, holding a dress in place as she fastened it around her shoulders. She fumed, the anger coming off the Chinese girl in near visible waves.  
  
"You take Shampoo's airen," Shampoo growled. "What you doing here?"  
  
Hotaru stared up, dazed and confused a little. "Wha?"  
  
As if by magic, bonbori appeared in Shampoo's hands. "You not nice girl! You viper! You steal Shampoo's airen!"  
  
Hotaru shook her head, trying to clear it and also to refute the charge laid against her. "No, I... we... he likes me. And I like him."  
  
Shampoo snarled, and leapt.  
  
Only to be caught in midair. "Hands such as these peasant's hands should never so much as caress the outermost layers of clothing of a goddess such as this," Tatewaki Kuno announced, holding the Amazon up with one hand and deftly warding off what would normally be crippling blows from the enraged girl. "Flee, ruffian, and leave my goddess alone." He gave a toss, and Shampoo bounced down close to her bike. She scowled at Kuno and Hotaru.  
  
"This not over yet." Then there was a ring of her bike's bell, and Shampoo was gone.  
  
Kuno turned back to Hotaru, and bent down on one knee, lowering his head. "I apologise for not ceasing this dreadful attack on your person sooner." He thought it best not to offer the reason, in case it should be taken as an excuse. Hotaru got Kuno to help her to her feet. "Shall I assist you to school?"  
  
"Yes, please, sempai," Hotaru muttered, running her fingers through her hair and grimacing. Not only were her clothes wet, but her hair was a mess. At least her bag was dry. She retreived it, and took one last look at the hole in the fence. And sniffed.  
  
The smell of roses was still strong in the air.  
  
******  
  
- he saw a young girl he recognised. "You again."  
  
Natsumi Otohime looked up from where she was trying to rip off flesh and congealed blood from a wound in her side. "Who are you?"  
  
Ah. That's right. Ranma had met this girl in combat, and in meditation, yet he'd thought the meditative event was simply a hallucination. And whlie he recognised her, she might not recognise him. Well, he'd have thought she might in his girl body - what he was in then - but not his male form. So that was a little confusing, too. But... it was dark in the alley, darker than it had any right to be, and it was bright outside. Perhaps she couldn't see his face?  
  
Ranma stepped closer. "You're hurt."  
  
Natsumi laughed. "You went to university to make that informed decision?" She gave a cough, and black ichor geysered from her nose. "Scram, normal. I've got other things to worry about right now. But if you don't leave, I'll make sure you stay for good."  
  
That sounded like good advice to Ranma, who was never known to stay around in a fight when he was losing. And he would lose this one, if it came to that, with the levels of power Natsumi was throwing out compared to his own. Yet, something held him back. "What happened to you?"  
  
"I screwed up. Tried to get rid of the Master's favourite. Okay?" She coughed again.  
  
Something in Ranma twisted. Something coiled. He asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS  
  
A short chapter this time. I've discovered new games on my new computer :) Yay! I can play things more recent than 1998 now, and I'm loving it :)  
  
Unfortunately, that's having a corresponding knock-on effect with my writing :P I started this chapter the other day, should have started it much earlier. But it's finished now. No, you didn't miss anything with this chapter, this has gone back to the beginning of this arc. The first chapter of this arc was the last. But was it everything of the last chapter, or were bits missing? Hmm. How did things get that bad? Where the heck are things in this chapter going?  
  
Next time: Umm... does anyone actually read this far? We catch up with Natsumi over the last week. Next time, on Something Moderately Interesting Some Of The Time! Uh, Love. ^^;; 


	3. Love 3

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 3  
  
** Omelette **  
  
  
Ranma paused. Something in him tensed. He knew what was coming, and he couldn't stop it. He asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"  
  
Natsumi Otohime, former Dark General of the Master, just stared.  
  
Of course, she recognised the red-haired woman leaning over her - as the lead General for so long of her Master's forces, she knew the red-haired fuku-wearing woman on sight. Which was weird, in a way, since the senshi all had magical properties that led to hidden identities. Natsumi knew she shouldn't have been able to recognise the girl before her... but she did. So that meant, this girl wasn't a senshi. She was just super powerful, nearly on the level of perhaps the weakest senshi... but smart enough, aggressive enough, just plain more skilled than the reincarnated warriors from the Silver Millennium. She fingered her VR helmet slowly, sitting just above her eyes, tempted ot check out the power levels of the girl, but she decided not to. She was currently in no position to do anything based on what she might find.  
  
She paused. She knew that the red-haired girl was uncertain here, not wanting to help, but being driven to it all the same. She looked up at the girl again, squinting into the light. "Why? Why would you ask me that?"  
  
The red-haired girl shrugged. "Perhaps it's something to do with fate. Maybe it's something with the differences between us." She hesitated, then added, "You really don't expect me to help you, do you?"  
  
Natsumi shook her head. "No. No, I don't. I've tried to kill you - and your friends. Why should you?"  
  
"Because I'm in the position to."  
  
"What would you expect from it?"  
  
"I dunno," the girl said thoughtfully. "Maybe to walk out of this alley alive and in one piece? Maybe to help someone who's not in the best of condition. Maybe just a story. Surprise me."  
  
So, Natsumi surprised both the girl and herself by beginning a story, as the girl bent down to help bind wounds.  
  
******  
  
Two weeks ago.  
  
******  
  
Natsumi knelt before the Master.   
  
"Yes, Master." His form was swelling, and had dulled considerably since the last time Natsumi had laid eyes on him, only scant hours before. Umiko was nowhere to be seen; indeed, her ki aura couldn't even be detected by Natsumi's VR helmet. She used that to scan the Master, finding that his time was almost at hand. The final hours before his transformation to his adult form were now. He spoke in her mind, telling her what she needed to do.  
  
She nodded as she accepted his instructions. Take a contingent of troops out, find a large number of people, absorb their energies into fuel for the Generals and the Master's adult form. They'd need it for the next stage of his plans.  
  
"It is time. I will assemble the troops."  
  
Natsumi ducked her head in a bow, then stood, turned on her heels, and left the room. All was silent as the Master's sightless eyes tracked her path along a corridor, seeing through the walls. A black polyp swelled up behind the Master, and disgorged Umiko, eyes closed, hands folded across her chest. She opened her eyes, lowered her arms, and looked at the door to the chamber.  
  
"She will make her move soon."  
  
The Master spoke in her mind. Umiko nodded. "She is a good General, Master, but her hunger for power is corrupting her views."  
  
She listened some more, then nodded.  
  
"Yes, Master, I will do this." Umiko nodded, and teleported out of the chamber, leaving the Master's crysalis to shiver in anticipation.  
  
******  
  
Natsumi stood in the underground meeting chamber, with a dozen lower youma. They were of all varieties: skeleton people, half-plant abominations, people whom had had their skulls explode under growing brains, fire creatures, were-cockroaches, and more. She enjoyed the rush of power from them, their loyalty to her every word. There was nothing better about being a powerful creature.  
  
She could have altered her form when she had been inducted, forcibly originally, into the Master's forces, but had decided rather to take advantage of the technical knowledge of the Master himself and developed an upgraded version of a typical VR helmet. Based around components dating back to the Silver Millennium and eras of advanced human and non-human solar system life forms even more prior to that, the VR helmet was supposedly superior in computing power than the device Sailor Mercury had been observed using. In addition, it had some nifty features that Natsumi hadn't made enough sue of, like for instance being able to project people into computer games.  
  
Also, it was great for playing Princess Maker 3D with.  
  
The troops before her now were some of those Natsumi had made herself since her turning. Yet not all - it wouldn't pay to perhaps lose all of her loyal troops.  
  
Standing in front of heryouma like this, though - it gave her such a rush. She hesitated a few moments to soak up the slavish devotion to her they offered.  
  
"The Master has given us a mission!" she called out, just loud enough to be heard by all. "We will proceed to a location where there are plenty of people! We will absorb their life energies, and bring them back here, for the glory of the Master."  
  
The largest were-roach lifted a foreclaw. "Will the senshi be there? They have that habit of showing up."  
  
Natsumi shook her head. "I have it on good authority that they will be... shall we say... delayed." She smiled.  
  
******  
  
Tokyo University.  
  
And the library explodes.  
  
******  
  
"We leave - now!"  
  
Natsumi called up a dimensional slipgate, teleporting the youma with her to the location she had chosen while on her way to the meeting chamber.  
  
It was a mall, large, long, filled with people of varying ages, nationalities and colours. The speech in the area was mostly Japanese, but there was some English, along with a smattering of Chinese and Korean. Natsumi's VR set automatically subtitled what she couldn't understand directly.  
  
Several people noticed, turned to look, and most thought the youma attack force was a promotional gimmick - although the flaming skeleton and huge, bulky dogman looked almost too real to be faked. A nervous titter went up from someone in the crowd as more people noticed the strange figures, and at least one teenaged girl buried her face in her laughing boyfriend's shoulder.  
  
Natsumi gave them a cursory glance, then turned to address her troops once more. "Now! Strike! Strike for -" Someone tapped her on the arm. A security guard, with a small taser on his hip. A second guard hung back about a dozen metres, a third on the other side of the mall's atrium where they had teleported in. Natsumi could feel another half-dozen congregating on this location. She sighed.  
  
"I'm afraid you'll have to move along," the guard said in a calm, reasonable voice. "We're a family-oriented mall, and you'll have to wear appropriate, uh, outfits if you want to enter here."  
  
He knew what they were. He HAD to know, Natsumi thought. Perhaps he was hoping either to stop a panic, or to talk himself out of seeing a bunch of monsters appear from nowhere. Oh well. Time to disappoint the poor human. She turned back to her troops momentarily. "Rip them apart. Suck them dry. Leave no human to tell the tale." She turned back to the security guard directly in front of her. "Except for this young man. He's mine." The smile she gave him wasn't pleasant, and promised much pain and agony.  
  
His hand gripped at his taser, and it was about then that the crowd realised something was up, that something here wasn't right. Like all good citizens of Tokyo, and in fact all of Japan, they knew of the existance of monsters dedicated to stealing ki from all people. But in time-honoured tradition, everyone believed in the simple phrase 'it couldn't happen to me'.  
  
Usually, they were right. With a country of nearly three hundred million people, the chances of the remaining youma hiding in dark places on the island attacking any particular one of them were staggeringly low. Over ninety-nine percent of people would never experience any evidence of a youma.  
  
That is, natural youma.  
  
Dark Kingdom youma... were a lot more common, but also, not as strong in the main as some of the ancient stand-bys, like Kappa of the bays and rivers, the occasional giant dinosaur throwback, and whatnot. And Dark Kingdom youma were often in the mood to procreate, especially the Generals. Stealing others' energies wasn't nearly as exciting if you didn't have anything else to show for it. Hence, most liked to make a troop or two if they could.  
  
Previous to now, the invasions hadn't often allowed for troop-making by the Generals. But the Master was different to Beryl and the others... he had plans that involved things a little more complicated than revenge on the Moon Kingdom, a little different from chasing after schoolgirls in short skirts.  
  
In the long-run, anyway, Natsumi thought with a smirk. The Master in his adult form would likely have some kind of sexual preference - but it might run the other way from the norm - he might chase after schoolboys in their long trousers.  
  
Or perhaps even schoolboys in short skirts.  
  
Natsumi stepped forward, towards the guard. He raised the taser from his hip, jammed it in her stomach just as the first youma behind her started to head towards the crowd. The guard could feel the panic rising, not just within himself, but within the crowd. Why'd this have to happen now? He was off-duty in half an hour, and the city was in an uproar and on alert for terrorists after the university library had been blown up. And now there was a creepy girl in front of him, who KEPT SMILING THAT CREEPY SMILE, who didn't seem to be alarmed at the taser in her stomach.  
  
Natsumi shrugged and yawned as he pulled the trigger. Bands of electrical current writhed around her body for thirty seconds, until the weapon fell from the fingers of the disbelieving guard. He gaped, then made to step back.  
  
A woman screamed in the crowd as the dogman reached her, pushed her aside, and tore her son in two. He grabbed at a tiny flash of light most people simply couldn't see, not being able to see that high into the EM spectrum, and absorbed the boy's ki. He then did the same to the mother, and continued in a line through the crowd.  
  
Other youma were more subtle, drawing the energy out of people with beams of light, sucking it out parasitically through the mouth, or in one case, eating eyeballs.  
  
The guard didn't quite manage to step back. Natsumi's leg swept under him, and he fell heavily to the ground. Then Natsumi was on him, tearing out his throat, splattering his comrade with his blood, making the other man turn to flee. The flaming skeleton got him in a deathgrip, burnt him alive. Toasted flesh assailed Natsumi's nose, and she felt aroused by that. Mmmmm... the blood soaking her clothing was also doing that. She captured his life essence before it could pass into the next world, and stood up to continue the work of directing the hit.  
  
******  
  
Now.  
  
******  
  
Ranma wound the ripped sheet around the General's arm. "So, you killed people," he tried to say casually. But somehow, the words stuck in his throat. Still, he knew he wouldn't be able to try and reason with her if he came off all high and mighty on her, so he did his best to fake it. He knew she knew he wasn't okay with her actions, but he was trying to be understanding.  
  
And for some reason Ranma didn't quite understand, Natsumi seemed to be grateful for his assistance. The story came easier now, and she seemed to be almost contrite for her behaviour. Whether this was ana ct or not, Ranma didn't know. But if she continued on this track, it wasn't too unlikely she could fall at his feet, apologising for even being a glint in her father's eye.  
  
"Yes," the General said, looking down at her hands, "I killed people."  
  
"So what did you do so wrong that your master wanted you dead?"  
  
The General eyed Ranma. "Master, with a capital m." Ranma nodded. "Well. The strike had gone well."  
  
******  
  
A week ago.  
  
******  
  
Natsumi lay on her bed, in the otherworldly base of operations the Master had set up for them. With his power, he had shifted a chunk of the sewers beneath Tokyo into a pocket dimension some time ago, and had set up permanent slipgates to Earth at certain sites in the complex for access. Of course, his Generals could teleport to and from Earth with ease, this was more for the average youma or espionage agent.  
  
She knew in her head what she wanted to do, and was working out exactly how to go about it. She'd given the energy she had gathered from the mall to the Master, or rather, tried to. He hadn't wanted it - denied giving her the orders to carry out that mission, in fact. That had confused her, but she reasoned, she could do with the power it granted. Within her, she felt it made her much stronger than even perhaps the Master.  
  
The last week, he had been mobile. Out and about, as it were, walking the streets of Earth. He'd already gained a reputation as an arrogant gaijin in more places than one, yet he'd never had a problem from those annoying senshi. At least the older, more experienced women weren't around any longer. Pluto, Neptune and Uranus thought things out a little better than the younger Inner senshi seemed to. But there was that nasty Nemesis around still... the Master's plans for her hadn't gone quite according to plan. And the red-headed senshi... she seemed to be much weaker than the others, but much, much more skilled in martial arts - which made her dangerous as the average youma was slow, unresponsive and weak compared to skills such as those observed in that girl.  
  
The Master was off on another of his jaunts right now, as a matter of fact. What he hoped to accomplish by doing nothing was yet to be made clear to Natsumi - perhaps his transformation to adulthood had readjusted his brain or something? He certainly didn't seem to be thinking right. No more 'go on the offensive, kill them all, we can always make more footsoldiers' strategies, instead he was more, 'I'm going out for a walk now, dear Umiko.'.  
  
The way he fawned over Umiko turned Natsumi's stomach.  
  
In fact, the more she thought of it, she could run this outfit better than either of them.  
  
Her plans had only called for showing herself to be stronger, more capable than Umiko, to replace the Master's favourite General. After all, Umiko was weak, a sop, unwilling to do the hard work that went with such a position. And Natsumi was willing.  
  
So very, very willing.  
  
But with the Master's habits of late, maybe she should set her sights higher, do something a little more... active in taking over the heirarchy of the organisation or something. Depose the ruling despot. Make herself one.  
  
She didn't quite realise it, but this was what she had been subconsciously moving towards. Natsumi's plans to oust Umiko had been born of the urge to lead, to rule, to not have to be under someone ever again. Power was her goal here, power over her own life. And if that meant power over others, hey, that was an added bonus.  
  
The more she thought about it, the more getting rid of Umiko now seemed like a good idea. Why? Because then the Master couldn't interfere in the outcome of the battle. Natsumi could take Umiko easily, she thought, but the Master would tip things in Umiko's favour. Hence, the General lifted herself from her bed, pulled her VR headset down over her eyes, and headed for the Master's bedchamber.  
  
******  
  
Umiko stood, ready. She already knew what was to come. She waited, ready for the imminent attack, yet relaxed, cool, calm. When she felt Natsumi's power levels flicker, in an attempt to cloak herself from others, Umiko knew this was the time. She flexed a hand at her side, feeling long-disused power crackle inside her fingers. It had been some time since she'd last powered up - heck, she hadn't used or abused her abilities sicne she had finished her initial alteration.  
  
And to be honest, Umiko didn't really want to waste another nurse's uniform. They were getting harder to come by.  
  
Natsumi was just around the corner now. Umiko forced herself to relax. The fight, definitely about to happen now, would be tough, but Umiko knew she outweighed the younger General. There were reasons the Master had stuck with Umiko as his nurse, as his mother, after all.  
  
The younger General stepped into the chamber, not so quiet now. Standing behind Umiko. The nurse turned. "So. It's time."  
  
Natsumi's eyes narrowed under the VR set, but she smirked. "Yes. Your time is finished, old hag. Time to make way for the younger generation."  
  
Umiko waved a hand around the chamber. "The Master will be back soon. How will you explain your injury, or even death, to him?"  
  
"Who said it will be e dying?" Natsumi snarled in reply, and let off a burst of energy.  
  
For a moment, Umiko was somewhere else, in a maze filled with dots. She could hear a steady chomping somewhere, and then in front of her, from a break in the walls, came a giant yellow dot with a mouth. Umiko blinked, then sighed, folded her arms, and snapped back to the base's pocket dimension. "Really. Children's games. Do you expect to beat me so easily?"  
  
"A girl can always hope," Natsumi snapped back, and struck a combat pose, resting her weight on her rear foot, pulling a hand up alongside her chest. Umiko sighed, then copied the position. Natsumi moved through a series of ever-faster poses, attempting to set up an attack posture Umiko couldn't match.  
  
Umiko lazily met all of them.  
  
Finally, the younger General had had enough. Natsumi leapt forward, strategy forgotten, relying on sheer physical power. An aura of flame sprung up around her body as she shifted forward, faster than the eye could make out over such a short distance. A mini sonic boom snapped stones in the nearby chambers in half.  
  
The girl's left leg swung up, and clipped Umiko on the ear. The older woman staggered back, her hand going up to check on the damage. Her fingers came away bloody, and she blinked. Natsumi was moving forward again, at speeds Umiko couldn't match, and snapped out a series of punches and kicks and the occasional tackle. Natsumi's fists and feet flew, looking as if not attached to the ends of her limbs.  
  
After a few minutes of being punched and kicked around, Umiko stood, panting in the middle of the room, blood leaking to the ground in numerous places. Natsumi stood back, getting ready to deliver the coup de grace.  
  
"Can you feel it, old woman? Can you feel the darkness waiting at the edgees for you?" Natsumi smirked, and parted her hands for her final attack. A small ball of energy formed, growing ever larger as she began to announce it. "Final power up - Excellent Attack!"  
  
The now-much larger energy ball was flung towards the slumping Umiko, and for a scant moment, time seemed to slow. Umiko smirked, just before the ball hit.  
  
It impacted and exploded, the wind from the strike and the debris pushing back at Natsumi's clothing. She held her forearms up over her face to protect her VR headset from chips of rock and metal, and then lowered them, waiting for the dust to clear.  
  
When it did, Umiko still stood, smirking. Not wounded now, she resembled something like a giant cat-person, her uniform ripped and torn, fur jutting out all over. And green cat's-eyes glared at the young General.  
  
'My strongest attack... didn't even phase her?' Natsumi thought, her last coherent thought before sixty kilogrammes of muscle and fur smashed into her.  
  
Umiko didn't care for niceties with her fighting, her greater strength and endurance allowed her to tear the other girl to shreds. Blood splattered the remaining walls of the chamber, slices of clothing and the occasional spurt of black ichor.  
  
The younger girl tried to block with magical attacks, but the older woman tore through her defences. She tried to counter the moves with her own, but Umiko was just too fast. Finally, she curled up in a ball on the ground, wrapping her hands around her head and pulling her knees up to her chest. Umiko didn't stop.  
  
And then, she did.  
  
The cat-thing stepped back from the bloodied girl, and snarled. Natsumi didn't dare look up. There was a burst of dark power from beside Natsumi, and she knew the Master was there. "Ah, poor girl, you've suffered so much. So very, very much. Which made you a perfect choice for this role. Conniving, scheming, grasping. And you've paid the price for it. Yet... your treachery was planned from the beginning, dear Natsumi. And I owe you something for that." He paused, stood up. "Go. I won't kill you. This time. Yet, if I see you again... Live a normal life, Natsumi Otohime. Be with your sister, your family. Fall in love and have children, and forget about this. Forget this ever happened." He turned, and left, a now-human Umiko by his side.  
  
The nurse paused a moment, looked over her shoulder at the girl shivering on the floor in a huddle. "You might not know it yet, but you just got the greatest gift of all." Then she, too, was gone.  
  
******  
  
Now.  
  
******  
  
"That's the story, girl." The General spoke quietly now, remember where she had gained her wounds. She had healed mostly faster than an average person, incredibly quickly, as a matter of fact. Yet her pride was hurt. Her self-esteem, her ideal life shattered in a few moments of frenzied clawing and biting.  
  
It all caught up with her as Ranma finished binding her wounds. She looked up, almost in panic. "What do I do now? Where does my life go?"  
  
"I think... your Master said it best. Live a normal life." Ranma sat back on his heels, tugging his skirt down absently over his knees as he did so. Damn the senshi and their wardrobe.  
  
"A normal life?"  
  
"Marry. Have kids. Work. Make the world a better place for everyone."  
  
"People... do that?"  
  
"Yeah. Why does your Master do what he does?"  
  
"I... I don't know. I used to, I think, but I don't know now at all." Natsumi paused. "I always thought it was to make a world for us."  
  
"Yet he can make pocket dimensions? And he wants this world?"  
  
"I... I don't know."  
  
Natsumi had changed greatly from the girl Ranma had stopped to help. She was nervous again, upset, saddened by her loss of what she viewed as her self and her mission. Ranma smiled. "You know. If you can keep quiet, I think I know a place where you can stay until you figure out what you want to do in life. How does that sound?"  
  
******  
  
It soudned good.  
  
******  
  
Natsumi's eyes opened when she saw the room. A decent futon to sprawl on, built-in wardrobe, connecting bathroom that had only been fixed a few weeks earlier, and most importantly -  
  
She ran to the window. The view of the surrounding city and mountains beyond lifted her heart immensely. The air was so fresh up here, and the light -  
  
That was one thing she had thought was bad in the pocket dimension she had lived in - there was no sun. No warmth, no light. Almost as if there was no love, and there wasn't. Not really. Deep down, even Natsumi had realised that what she felt for the Master was filial duty rather than love - and it seemed she'd been turned with even less of that than most of the youma had.  
  
So, what was she to do now?  
  
Ranma shrugged. "I dunno. I mean, you're welcome to stay here until you can figure things out. Just, uh, stay out of sight of the other girls, okay? They're... a little touchy." Natsumi frowned, wondering why they would dislike a stranger, until Ranma mentioned one of the girls had been the boyfriend of Keitaro Urashima. Oh. That explained a lot. She promised the red-haired girl she would keep out of their way as best she could, and turned back to the window, inhaling the air.  
  
How could she have ever forgotten what it was like to just stand there and smell the freshness of the world?  
  
******  
  
Ranma stopped just down the hallway, head lowered in thought. He didn't know if this was a good idea, having a Dark General in the dorm, but then, did he have a choice? He didn't want to try and force her to change her mind about her path in life, but she had warned him of various things to come. He owed her a chance at a normal life, if that was what she decided.  
  
So he shrugged, and went downstairs to find something to eat.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru stepped up the hill's stairs slowly, deep in thought. A rose-scented man. A mystery. A prince. She already had a prince, though.  
  
Was a girl allowed two?  
  
  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Mmmm. Late again. This one would not write at all. I think it turned out okay, though.  
  
Next time: Ummm... you're asking me to think again. More with Natsumi, of course. And Hotaru's Rose Prince. Ahh, young love... 


	4. Love 4

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 4  
  
** New Beginnings **  
  
  
Princess Serenity stared from the window in her chambers, high up in one of the spires of the Moon Castle. From here, she could see to the horizon with no difficulty - although, considering it was only a few scant miles from where she sat, that wasn't surprising. The crystal buildings down below, the main city of the Moon Kingdom, reflected blue light. Serenity knew what from - even without looking up, she could feel the Blue Star's light shining on her as well.  
  
Not really a star. A planet. Serenity knew that, but as a child, she had seen the glowing blue thing in the skies above the palace, and had instantly described it as a star to those around her. Endymion, her bethrothed since before birth, had banged the back of her head with the palm of his hand, and told her what it was.  
  
Serenity hadn't believed him, of course.  
  
And of course, he had been right and she wrong.  
  
Her mother had later shown her the surface of her Blue Star (by this point, her name for it had stuck in her mind) through telescopes and viewing devices made in Mercury's massive technology shops. The people there were base, primitive, barely learning to till the soil, only a few domesticated animals for food and mutual protection. Serenity had gazed in awe at the creatures living below her, more animal than human, and asked her mother why they had to live in such bad conditions, while the rest of the solar system lived in beauty, with intelligence, able to move between the stars with as much effort as crossing a room.  
  
The Queen had sat Serenity on her knee, and told her that those primitives were what allowed the Moon Kingdom to exist. So Above As Below, the Queen said. Serenity asked how that could be, and her mother smiled.  
  
"Serenity, it is a grown-up concept. How does one explain the sun to a child?"  
  
"It's an ovoid of matter compressed to the temperature fusion starts at, mother. Even *I* know that."  
  
"That isn't what I meant," but the Queen had another smile on her lips. "This matter is complicated. And the Moon Kingdom is ever in peril. So long as those below are as they are, then balance is retained in the system. Light and Dark coexist - you cannot have one without the other."  
  
"Are they are Dark, then?"  
  
"No, they are not. The Dark... you know of the Dark Kingdom."  
  
"Yes, mother." Serenity had read in books and been taught by her tutors about the horrors of the Dark Kingdom, where evil, power-hungry individuals battled between one another to gain ever more power, for seemingly no reason.  
  
"The Dark Kingdom is the other side of our coin. For the Moon Kingdom to exist, so must there be a polar opposite. A kingdom of Light means a kingdom of Dark must also exist."  
  
"Then where does the Blue Star come from, mother?"  
  
The Queen nodded at the viewing screens, then rummaged in her gown. Eventually, she found a simple coin, and produced it to show her daughter, who blinked at her mother uncomprehendingly. "This side," the queen said, "is the Moon Kingdom. It is one side of the coin. This side," she tapped the other side of the coin, "is the Dark Kingdom."  
  
"And where does the Blue Star come into it?" Serenity couldn't see how the planet above could possibly fit into this analogy. Her mother had run out of sides on the coin.  
  
"Ah, that's the easy part." The Queen tapped the edge of the coin. "This is the planet Earth. That which joins both sides and makes them possible. You see, the people of Earth have equal amounts of Light and Dark within them. That is their life force, you might say. When one force gained too much weight in comparison to the other, then the scales tip in favour of the greater force. This is why the people below live as they do. If they ever civilised, they would have Want in addition to Need, which is all they have now. Want leads to ever greater problems, and finally to the Dark that lies inside the hearts of every human."  
  
"So, if they built cities and spaceships, they would become evil?"  
  
"No. Not all. Perhaps not even most. But the equilibium between Light and Dark would be disturbed. And thus would the Moon Kingdom find itself in a precarious position."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because that Darkness would empower the Dark Kingdom, and the Moon Kingdom would face a loss in power."  
  
"Which would mean a change in the balance of power, right?"  
  
The Queen nodded. "That is so. We would then have to find other means of protecting our kingdom then."  
  
"Could that ever happen, mother? The humans up there look like they're slowly working out how to build stuff."  
  
"One day, perhaps... one day. But not this day. And not for a great many more days."  
  
There was a polite cough from behind the Queen and Princess, and the Queen turned. "Yes, Admiral Jadite?"  
  
"Your fleet has been prepared, ma'am. We depart for Mercury within the hour."  
  
The Queen palced Serenity down on the ground, and bent down to look into her eyes. "Now. You go be a good girl for your tutors. We will not be long, your father and I. This is only a goodwill tour of the planets... and we will bring you something back."  
  
"I'll be good, mother," Serenity said.  
  
******  
  
Usagi awoke, wondering why her bed was so hard and... oh. A dream. Of course, a dream of her past life. Something she should have known straight away.  
  
Now, *why* she'd dreamt of the Moon Kingdom, and about such a thing, Usagi didn't know. But then, mostly, she didn't care about the subject - just that she'd had another vision of the past! Always capable of getting someone as scatter-brained as Usagi into a hyper mood.  
  
It didn't matter to her that it was still dark outside, she had to tell someone.  
  
******  
  
The few people in the upstairs rooms were sleeping soundly. Usagi couldn't wake them. So she crept downstairs. Hotaru wasn't in her room... perhaps she was in Ranma's? Oh yeah, that'd go down real well with the other Outer senshi. Usagi couldn't help herself - she slipped Ranma's door open and flipped on the lights, jumping inside to meet the worst possible scenario - but no Hotaru.  
  
No Ranma, for that matter.  
  
This was getting ever more puzzling. It was about then that Usagi heard a clank from the kitchen. She decided to investigate - after all, she could never *ever* eat off those benches again if Ranma and Hotaru...  
  
But then, where were the other senshi? Visions of a naughty nature, including some of the things she had seen in that hentai stash her brother didn't think she knew about, flashed past her eyes - mass orgies.  
  
But no. Upon flinging open that door, she was greeted by Makoto, blinking at her in surprise, steaming rice and vegetables, as well as wrapping up small seafood bites. "Usagi?"  
  
"Where is everyone?" Usagi asked. "I've just had a vision!"  
  
Makoto looked sympathetic. "We all knew this day would come. The stress is getting to you. Was it Mamoru again, telling you to flash -"  
  
"No! It wasn't like that!" Usagi protested. Although she was *sure* it had been Mamoru that time... thankfully she'd told her friends about it before acting on it, and they had managed to talk her out of it. It had been a somewhat embarrassing memory. "It was about the Moon Kingdom, ten thousand years ago, probably just before they... we... all died out."  
  
Makoto leaned forward, putting the food down and looking a little more serious. "The end of the Moon Kingdom? Did you see anything important?"  
  
Usagi went to nod proudly, until she realised, well, no, she hadn't seen anything important. Not to her, anyway. Just her talking to her mother about the Dark Kingdom. She related this to Makoto, who nodded sagely, and said, "You should tell Ami."  
  
"She's sleeping, and I can't wake her up. She's like a log!" Usagi frowned again. "Where *is* everyone? Is there a sale I don't know about? Cute boys or something?"  
  
"I don't think Ranma would go ogle cute boys somehow, Usagi," Makoto chuckled. "But I forgot. You don't see this side of dawn, do you? Go look out the front door."  
  
Usagi nodded, and headed outside. There, on the front gravel entrance path, stood Hotaru, Minako, Rei, Mitsuki and Ranma, in training gis. Usagi noted that Makoto had been wearing one in the kitchen, but it hadn't penetrated then. Oh. Morning training. Usagi should have known.  
  
Ranma looked up and caught her about to duck back inside, and called out, "Usagi! Joining us this morning?" He started forward, still in his cursed girl form, stepping around the other girls, being careful not to interrupt their warm-ups. Hotaru gave him a wan, distant smile as he passed, but that was about all the acknowledgement he got as he made his way towards Usagi.  
  
She shook her head. "No, not me. This is a stupid time to be awake."  
  
Ranma grinned. "Best time of the day! And you know, practising for an hour in the morning really helps you wake up, get fit, lose that flab you've been putting on the last couple of months."  
  
"Flab? What -"  
  
"And yeah, you know, I'm doing advanced stuff with the others, but I'm sure I can work something up for you, at your level."  
  
Usagi grimaced.  
  
"It could be a challenge, though..."  
  
Mitsuki leaned in towards Hotaru. "He seems hyperactive this morning. Did you, uh, um..."  
  
"Stop hinting. And no." Hotaru shook her head. Her gaze told Mitsuki that her mind was on something else entirely. Rei glanced over.  
  
"Mitsuki? Want to spar this morning?"  
  
The purple-haired woman looked back, a little nervous. "Uh, you know, that might not be a good idea."  
  
"Oh come on, you're not that far ahead of me."  
  
Mitsuki shrugged. "Okay..."  
  
Hotaru continued warming up, lost in her own little world, oblivious to everything.  
  
Ranma waited, a bright expression on his face. He was actually enjoying this, being up and able to move again. The previous night, he had slept soundly, and felt that his ki was high once again. Much higher than the day before, at least. He wouldn't want to tackle any youma on a day like this. Or even Kuno.  
  
Of course, if it was a male youma... this body had certain advantages.  
  
Ranma wasn't sure if either of them worked on monsters, but if necessity called for it, perhaps he could find out.  
  
If things got that bad, there were much worse things he could do than flash his breasts at someone. Like try and run, for example. Just the act of turning to flee wasted precious moments that could be better put to use by attempting another attack, defence, or some way to wiggle out of the predicament without including dying.  
  
But for now, he was happy. And Usagi looked decidedly less so, growing worse by the moment. Ranma guessed the rapid backpedalling and shaking of her head, followed by the slamming of the front doors, to mean that Usagi wasn't going to join them that morning. Pity. He was feeling up to a challenge.  
  
As Makoto joined them and ran through a quick series of stretches and some quick, sketched moves, Ranma retook his place in front of them. "Good morning, class."  
  
"Good morning, sensei," the others chimed back. Ranma noted Hotaru looked somewhat distracted - that would earn her a punch or a kick or three, until she snapped back into the here and now. He wondered what was on her mind, but forgot all about that as he started them through their morning practise routines.  
  
******  
  
Up on the roof, Natsumi watched. Her VR headset was pushed back, she was using her Mark 1 - her eyes - sensors to observe the movements of the women below. Lots of flesh bounced, but not nearly as much as her older sister had to throw around. Mutsumi was... well, even that Ranma woman didn't come close.  
  
Okay, close, but still smaller.  
  
But her older sister's chest didn't jiggle that much. Possibly because the only time she moved was usually when she fell asleep on someone or something, which she did often. Natsumi sighed, and shifted to get more comfortable on the rooftop. The girls all punched, kicked, punched, kicked, ad nauseum, then broke off into pairs. She found the purple-haired one's fight with the raven-haired younger woman to be one of the more interesting.  
  
Purple leapt forward, legs trailing behind her, until Raven had set up an initial blocking move, designed to make it easier for Raven to shift into a specific defence posture once Purple committed to an attack. Purple's legs swung out then sideways, almost as if she was doing the splits, but swung each of her legs around in a one-eighty degree arc. Raven's forearms came up in a specific block, and Purple collided with them, but then flexed at the knees, and tapped Raven's shoulders with her heels. Natsumi recognised the move - mostly non-contact sparring, but the shoulder touch was intentional - Purple could have hit higher, with much more force.  
  
At Raven's head. Interesting. The woman was skilled.  
  
She bent backwards at the waist, legs unwrapping while Raven ducked low and punched forward. Purple's body twisted near impossibly while she vaulted from her hands up to her feet around the incoming fist, and slipped a foot past the outstretched arm, lightly touching Raven's stomach. Raven obviously didn't like that, and launched into a rapid volley of punches that moved almost too fast for even Natsumi to see. None touched, although a few came close. One whistled through Purple's hair, and Raven smirked arrogantly, her expression turning a little darker when the older woman's hand tapped her stomach lightly again. The two sprang apart, Raven reassessing her position, shifting her stance, readying for another attack momentarily.  
  
Purple wasn't out of breath, but did look a little preoccupied, a little concerned. Not with exterior events, but almost like something internal. Interesting. That reminded Natsumi of the look one of the senshi gave from time to time, the purple-haired one who was older than the rest. She wondered if this woman would turn out to have a similar fighting style?  
  
Raven had reassessed her position by now, and launched forth another attack, which Purple duly dodged. Raven swung a wild fist around in an arc, heading for Purple's shoulder, but again the older woman dodged. Natsumi guessed that distracted expression, which appeared once more, was responsible for her not noticing the foot arcing up towards her.  
  
That smacked into her shoulder hard, and spun her around; Raven wasn't playing by the rules.  
  
The distracted expression on Purple's face disappeared instantly, replaced by one of anger such as Natsumi didn't see on a human very often. She leapt forward, fast, almost too fast for Natsumi to see, and slammed a fist down between Raven's feet.  
  
The ground shattered, chunks of dirt, rock and cement lifting from the ground almost in slow motion. Raven was frozen to the spot with shock as the noise battered her gi, tearing at loose edges and assaulting her ears with a low, dull throb. Natsumi perked up - that kind of strength was almost inhuman. Hell, it *was* inhuman!  
  
She leaned further forward, to get a better view, and fingered her headset idly. But no, she'd keep watching with her eyes. The digital feedback systems were nice, but some things that the onboard computers deemed not necessary were removed. Thus, she would only get an abbreviated version of the fight with them down.  
  
She noticed Ranma bounce from her fight, getting in between Raven and Purple, Raven staggering back. She wasn't looking at her, though, but at Purple, and she waited until Purple was ready to stand. She bowed her head. "I am sorry, sensei. I should not have lost my temper."  
  
Ranma stared into her eyes, and she fidgited. "Is your medication...?"  
  
"My medication is fine... but as always, adrenyline seems to stop it from working." Purple looked downcast now, really embarrassed. "I'm fine, really. I've been taking my pills."  
  
Ranma nodded, saying nothing for a time. Then she nodded, and stepped back. "Mitsuki. Spar with me for now, okay? I'm more your speed and strength and skill." Purple looked uncomfortable with that, until Ranma sighed, bent over, and punched the ground with less force than Purple had. Under her fist, the earth shattered in a much wider circle, sending clods of earth skyward.  
  
Natsumi's eyes narrowed further. This Ranma girl... she wasn't a senshi, and yet she showed abilities of them? Maybe that would bear looking into. Non-magical-based powers weren't known to the Dark Kingdom. Perhaps she could make use of that knowledge moving against the Master...  
  
******  
  
Down below, Ranma dealt several kicks to Mitsuki's stomach. "Ignore Rei; she likes getting under people's skin."  
  
Mitsuki grunted, blocking one of Ranma's punches, and sending two at her attacker. When neither of them succeeded in touching her sensei, she stepped back a little, got some room to manoeuvre in. "She annoys me when she gets physical."  
  
"She can't help it," Ranma said, circling. "She's got a worse temper than Makoto."  
  
"At least Makoto knows the meaning of non-contact and minimal contact," Mitsuki returned. "Even if her moves are signposted a mile away."  
  
"Can't blame her for her style."  
  
"Maybe. Are you going to teach us stuff that's useful, though? I mean, katas are nice enough, but the attacks you have - combined with our powers..." Mitsuki's voice trailed off as she saw Ranma's eyes narrow.  
  
"The attacks I make... the ones I can do... you couldn't. I've trained every day of my life to be able to do things like this." He stopped for a moment, moved in close to Mitsuki without her being aware he'd moved until she suddenly felt a pair of fists lying softly on her ribcage. She blinked, looked down. There was Ranma, staring up at her with those huge eyes of his, his arms blurring in a rush of motion her eyes just couldn't make out. Mitsuki found she couldn't even feel his fists moving from the point they were hitting. Then Ranma was gone again, back where he'd been a moment ago. He shook his head. "I can't teach you that at all. Maybe in ten years or so, if you stick with this. As for using this with your powers? Forget it. You all rely on them too much for the moment, and your teamwork sucks, to be honest."  
  
Mitsuki blinked. "Then why -"  
  
"Am I teaching you guys?" Ranma smiled. "I've been waiting for someone to ask me. What point is there relying on powers, when you've got super strength? And speed, invulnerability, and a team? Most youma I've seen here tend to be resistant to your magic, in some way. All have been hurt by hitting them. So why not hit them hard, fast, coordinated?"  
  
Mitsuki moved in again, and the sparring started anew.  
  
"I made mistakes before I got hurt. I let you guys use your powers. I let you guys bounce all over the place, let you dictate to a large extent the pace at which we moved, and what we did. No more. I'm structuring you guys. Classes from today on will be different."  
  
The others heard him talking to Mitsuki, slowed down their sparring matches, and moved over to listen to the conversation.  
  
Ranma ducked a pair of kicks,   
  
"I'm gonna give you all a basic course. You'll learn to spar properly, proper moves, a bit of discipline. No powers for now. You'll work individually, and will spar in pairs, as normal students do."  
  
Ranma jumped over a series of punches, finally backflipping off Mitsuki's head. She started getting a little angry, forced herself to calm down again. Ranma tapped each of her shoulders before Mistuki turned.  
  
"Once I think you've got the basics down, we'll start on that teamwork thing. No powers, just you all working at keeping your moves coordinated with other people, so you don't fall over each other in battle. The more of you senshi I can actually get here... that just makes it better."  
  
He dodged another couple of moves from Mitsuki.  
  
"You're telegraphing those, Mitsuki. Snap your moves a little better. Don't hesitate in setting up. And let them flow."  
  
"If I snap my moves, how can they flow?" Mitsuki growled.  
  
Ranma demonstrated, making quick, definite movements with his arms and legs, starting one movement just before the previous finished. "Never leave yourself open," he said, tapping Mitsuki's stomach with a finger as she extended herself in a punch. He bent away from her knee that raised up under him. "You could learn a few things about street brawling from Makoto."  
  
Makoto blushed. "I'm not that bad," she grumbled.  
  
"You'll all learn from each other. The more you know about your strengths and weaknesses, the better you function as a group. Hotaru's good with staves but has no reach without one. Makoto is good with her fists, but her style isn't suited to more than one opponant. Mitsuki just doesn't give up, that's both strength and weakness. Rei's temper gets the better of her, Minako can't concentrate. Should I go on?"  
  
The women all looked at each other, apart from Hotaru, who gazed at the sparring match going on in front of her without seeing it.  
  
"I wanna build you all up, so you don't make those mistakes. You're not invincible. You get beaten by the most basic youma. Mercury has saved you guys too often with her computer, Sailor Moon with that sceptre, tiara or crystal. You can't rely on them for ever. What if Mercury is held prisoner? What if Sailor Moon is... well, she's useless anyway."  
  
Ranma tapped Mitsuki's shoulder again. Mitsuki responded with a pair of jabs, and a spinning kick that was matched by a kick by her other leg, arcing back over in a high crescent. Ranma let the crescent kick tap him slightly, and nodded. "That was a better attack. Following up like that is what I want you to do. Don't think three attacks in a row'll get you anywhere, do four, five, six, until you get a hit."  
  
"You let me get that one," Mitsuki panted.  
  
"You're playing on my ground, handicapping yourself. Why should I fight at my full strength while you can't?"  
  
They sparred a few minutes more, in silence, apart from Ranma's occasional recommendation. Finally, he raised a hand in a signal to stop the match. He looked around. "That'll be it for this morning."  
  
Makoto stepped forward, lifting her chin. "Breakfast is ready, then," she announced. The senshi disappeared, leaving Ranma and Hotaru standing, Ranma confused at the sudden disappearance of the women from around him, Hotaru still staring at the spot where Ranma and Mitsuki had been sparring.  
  
She didn't look like she was aware of the world around her, so Ranma tapped her on the shoulder. Hotaru looked up at him, her expression surprised.  
  
"Hotaru-chan? Are you okay?" he asked, concern in his voice. Hotaru hadn't been acting the same since the day before, when she'd come home from school. She'd been weird, distant, hadn't wanted to watch TV with him or ask for help with her sparring or homework (although the help Ranma could give her with that was limited to excuses for why her homework wasn't done).  
  
What she said next stayed with him for the next few days, as he pondered it, trying to work out what she meant by it.  
  
She looked up, so surprised, so innocent, so beautiful that Ranma felt an urge to kiss her. He started to lean in, moving ever so slightly towards her upturned mouth, thinking as always, she'd reciprocate. Ranma's eyes closed as he moved further.  
  
And then.  
  
"I can still smell the roses."  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Finally finished. This has taken nearly a week to write... although it's been about a month since I last got a chapter out.  
  
Right after I finished the last one, I got three weeks of work, in the fields, stacking pineapples on a bin on the back of a tractor. Woo, love that Australian summer sun :P That weather and the exhaustion the job provided led me not to write for that three weeks. It's taken me that long to recover.  
  
Also, the last week, this chapter's been competing with a 3d model I've been working on. Finished it tonight, so thought, damn, finish this now, too :) So here it is, chapter 4 of Love. Hopefully, chapter 5 won't be too far away ^^'  
  
so, next time on Love: Natsumi's heart to heart, the rose-scented prince (for sure), no training for a change, and some more from the Moon Kingdom. 


	5. Love 5

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 5  
  
** Homeward Bound **  
  
  
Serenity stared up at the Blue Star above her. Well, technically, she knew now that depended on her own personal point of reference. Systemwise, the Blue Star was sideways-ish. Galaxywise... that started getting confusing. Serenity didn't care about that, though. Twelve years old now, and things hadn't been going too well for the last few years. Things on Earth had taken a dramatic turn, with the first human societies coming together from the small hunter-gatherer family groups that had existed prior and after the last ice age. These socities were small, tightly-grouped, and not really deserving of the term intelligent.  
  
Yet they were developing. And fast, too. Fire had been conquered long, long ago, but now all in the groups knew how to make it. And tools were common. Wolves had stayed with humans during the ice ages for food purposes - they got fed if they assisted in the hunts - and so were settling in to new forms, new breeds, and new attitudes towards people. Horses, too, were being ridden by some peoples. Houses were being erected, and one tribe, Serenity had noted in her studies, were beginning to realise that certain types of food could be grown and harvested.  
  
And while Serenity thought this was great, her mother and father found it to be an extremely tiring time.  
  
The princess didn't know exactly what was going on - she wasn't privvy to every decision made by her parents, nor the intelligence they received - but one did hear things in a palace, and the princess' own intelligence network was rather well-equipped.  
  
Beside her, the Senshi of Mercury played with an image of a mechanical bug on her computer's touchscreen. Serenity watched for a few moments, then, bored, returned to staring at the Earth above.  
  
"You know," she said, in an off-handed manner, "Endymion's been made the Prince of Earth."  
  
"Of course. The planet needs a protector and a voice in the Royal Chambers, Princess."  
  
"Mercury, you can call me by my name, you know," Serenity scowled momentarily.  
  
"I'll call you by your name, Princess, when you call me by mine." Serenity guessed Mercury had to know she didn't know any of their actual names. As was typical in protective services of the Moon Kingdom, being familiar with one's charge, or one's protector, led to problems.  
  
And not usually the ones entertainments were made of, either.  
  
And yet, Mercury found it both interesting and annoying that Serenity wanted to be friends with her, and the other Guardians of the Kingdom.  
  
"Be that as it may, why him? He is my bethrothed!"  
  
Mercury sighed, lowered her computer to her knees. "Princess, you are a princess. You must marry a prince. Therefore, Endymion must be a prince to be your bethrothed."  
  
"But no one complained about that while we were children!"  
  
"Time could be taken then to engineer things so he could be a prince. You do know about the time differential here, don't you?"  
  
Serenity sighed, and rolled her eyes back. "Yes, yes, yes. We did this in class, you know." She closed her eyes, and recited from a textbook. "'Time in the Moon Kingdom passes on a different plane to that of the rest of the universe, as there is much to be protected and maintained and little time in which to do it in. The Time Gate on Pluto, finest engineering feat of the architect blah blah blah, maintains this precious balance so that time can be utilised more efficiently. This process is characterised in realspace by an increased flow of chronitons and blah blah.'"  
  
"I can see why you failed your temporal mechanics tests, Princess."  
  
"Who'd ever need to know how to field strip a temporal gate?" Serenity snorted. "Gimme the crown, the staff, and I'll do the job. It's only ceremony anyway."  
  
Mercury tapped the monitor. "That's what you wanted to find out, remember? Where your parents have been lately?"  
  
"You know, and you won't tell me," grumped Serenity.  
  
"I don't know, and that's the only reason I agreed to do this." Mercury tapped the icon of the bug's braincase, and on the right side of the monitor, a small picture image opened. Scratchy sound issues from the device's speakers.  
  
On the screen, Queen Serenity and her husband leaned over a round table, with an inlaid top, puzzling over icons that didn't make sense to the Princess. Mercury frowned, though, and started running a library function on the left side of the screen to confirm some nasty suspicions. Behind the King and Queen stood a pair of advisors, with Planet Mercury-constructed computers.  
  
"- into the seventh sector, Highness."  
  
The King looked troubled. "Hasn't Zoicite returned with the Martian fleets yet?"  
  
"No. Planet Mercury s being evacuated. Dark Kingdom forces have invaded the lower levels of the Utopia University, and have disabled the coolant systems in environmental control. The Dean estimates the University will be lost in another three days, without reinforcements."  
  
"What about the automated defence factories?" asked Serenity.  
  
"Enemy bombardment from orbit has them in a repair cycle. They'll be online again in another two days."  
  
"Where is Zoicite?" The King, again.  
  
"Father seems to be concerned," the Princess remarked. "I wonder why?"  
  
"I've been looking up those symbols they're looking at, Princess," Mercury said in a hushed tone. "Those are Dark Kingdom armies. And there seem to be more than the Moon Kingdom's on Mercury."  
  
Serenity's head whipped around to stare at her bodyguard. "You mean, we're going to lose your homeworld to these people?"  
  
"Perhaps, Princess, perhaps not." Mercury closed the connection with the bug, and stood. "Regardless, I feel I must contact   
  
Serenity stood, also. "I am sorry, Mercury. I'll help you get back if I can."  
  
Mercury nodded, and both turned to leave the observation gallery, but stopped short finding Sailor Saturn standing behind them, glaring at both. Behind her stood Serenity's tutor and personal guardian, Luna. The short woman fidgeted. "Princess. Please. Don't concern yourself with matters of state. You'll have to face them soon enough in your life."  
  
Serenity looked as if she was going to say something, regardless of the dark look on Saturn's face that brooked no argument, but then glanced sideways at Mercury, remembered that she had an obligation to her friend, and said nothing. Contrite, both girls fled the room.  
  
And once in the clear, Serenity helped Mercury to her personal courier.  
  
As the ship lifted from the moon's surface, Serenity hoped that she would see the young Senshi again. She heard a footstep behind her - Saturn, she knew from the heavier tread and the click of the Silence Glaive on the ferrocrete flooring.  
  
"Highness. If you lose any of us Guardians, things may go worse for your parents than they do now. don't risk any more of us in such a foolish gesture."  
  
"Saturn, have you realised that sometimes, we have higher obligations than that of state or our own self-protection?" Serenity turned to face Saturn. "If I can't look to the wellbeing of my subjects now, what kind of Queen will I become?" And then she walked out of the pad area, leaving to her personal quarters.  
  
******  
  
Usagi woke again. Two dreams in as many nights. That had to be a good sign.  
  
Downstairs, she could hear the morning training of the senshi who had decided to train. Ami had asked Usagi to partner up with her and join the others, but Usagi protested, she didn't want to get up early in the morning. Besides, she wasn't as clumsy now as she once was, which was always a good thing, especially when at the top of the inn's hillside stairs, and didn't want to find out just how much of that was good fakery and self-deception on her part.  
  
She went into the kitchen, anyway, where she found Makoto, who'd left practise early to finish up with the breakfast preparations. Within moments, the front doors were thrown open, and a horde of ravenous teenage women rushed into the kitchen and began tearing into the food Makoto had prepared. Usagi grimaced at how awake everyone seemed to be, and got herself a glass of water. As she drank, she noted what Makoto had laid on the table for people to eat. And it was very nice food.  
  
Which made Usagi wonder, why the rest of them weren't fed like that? Well, her and Ami, she meant. Hotaru, Makoto, Minako, Rei, Mitsuki and Ranma ate like kings, er, queens, in the morning, why shouldn't Usagi? But within moments, the others had finished bolting their food (looked like Ranma had trained them in a few more things than just plain normal martial arts) and rushed for quick dips in the hot springs.  
  
Ranma, as usual, even though still in his female body, headed for the male springs, and in particular the cold water spring in that enclosure - Hotaru still thought it not a good idea for him to strain his body by transforming yet. Usagi just thought that Hotaru was getting some weird ideas from watching Ranma bounce around the house. Minako certainly was, that was for sure. But it was a sign that Hotaru was growing up - again - so that had to be something good.  
  
They returned in short order, dressed for school and university, where each student attended. Hotaru fidgited uncomfortably as Ranma cast an enquiring eye across Hotaru's uniform, as if it reminded him of something, but shook the feeling of familiarity off, and bade her a good day, heading for the roof to carry out some more repairs on tiles.  
  
Usagi reckoned by now the Ai Sou had to have the best repaired roof in all of Japan.  
  
She herself hurried to ready herself for another day of boring lectures and tutorials, and one minor test in a history lesson. But she wanted to leave with Ami, and tell her about the latest dream of times long past. Why? Well, anything about the Moon Kingdom could be of use. They already knew it was Saturn who had destroyed the Kingdom - the ultimate protection of the Kingdom against the Dark Kingdom - but not quite the circumstances that led up to it. Nor did they know a lot about themselves in those previous lives. Any information could make a difference.  
  
And with another Dark Kingdom incursion into the world underway, anything that could be remembered could be of extreme importance. History had shown things remembered were usually things that *had* to be remembered, for one reason or another.  
  
They hurried down the stairs to the roadway, passing by Hotaru who was standing stock-still at the bottom. She seemed to be staring off into space for no particular reason, and Usagi saw no need to point out to the younger senshi that she would be late if she stood there much longer.  
  
She didn't notice the man with the long blond hair across the road, all dressed in black.  
  
But, as she hurried off down the street towards the train station, she did catch a whiff of roses in the air...  
  
******  
  
Hotaru couldn't believe her eyes. He was there, watching her. And smiling.  
  
Why was he smiling?  
  
Self-consciously, she checked without looking that her dress was smoothed down, her hair in place. Nothing showing that shouldn't be showing. Everything tucked in where it should be tucked. A quick peek proved she hadn't mixed pairs of socks up this morning (not like the morning she had Kuno running insanely through the school demanding everyone swap a sock because divine revelations had stated it must be so) so why was he staring?  
  
Hotaru didn't know. She wasn't even sure she wanted to know why he was smiling. Why? Because that thought opened a door in her mind that would open other doors, doors she wanted to stay shut. She had her Prince now. Ranma... suited her. Someone who knew her inside and out, outward self and secret self, and yet still wasn't afraid of her power. Heck, he might not be able to match her in the power stakes, but he could overpower her through sheer skill. He was good for her, and she likewise wanted to be good for him. She wasn't going to look at this man, this man who'd saved her life, whom she now felt a deep debt of gratitude towards.  
  
But she smelt the scent of roses, and her eyes and head moved of their own volition. She found herself staring into his eyes, and the sounds of the street around her tunneled into oblivion, quickly followed by her vision. All she could see was his eyes... staring... staring...  
  
Something surged in her stomach. Not like a feeling of nausea, or bile rising up towards her throat, but a happier feeling, joy... like a million bubbles rising through her digestive system. This was a thousand times more powerful than what she felt for Ranma... this was completely physical, a yearning more like a yanking across the street.  
  
She barely felt her feet move, and before she knew it, Hotaru was standing next to the blond-haired man. His eyes were casual, calm, yet piercing to the core of her soul. She fell into them, willingly... or so her mind told her.  
  
Her heart told her otherwise.  
  
Something about him didn't seem right. She'd never seen this man before the other day... why should he engender such a response in the core of her being? More to the point, how could he?  
  
But rational thought left her body as his arm swept around the small of her back, and drew her closer to him. The real world seemed to tunnel further behind Hotaru as all she could sense now was the closeness of his body, the rose-tinted scent of him, the overpowering stare from his eyes.  
  
She tried to push away, blushing, beginning a protest of innocence that she knew was a fake, and so he knew this as well - she could tell from the way one corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk.  
  
"I... I have school," she protested, even more feebily.  
  
"It can wait," the rose-scented Prince replied quietly. "We have business... you and I..."  
  
"Business?" Hotaru breathed.  
  
"Business," the man agreed, and leant in low, kissing Hotaru lightly on the lips. They were warm, moist, and sent shivers of electricity throughout Hotaru's body. She later swore she could remember small static charges leaping from the tips of her outstretched fingers - but she put that down to imagination in the heat of the moment.  
  
Ranma never kissed her like this.  
  
Ranma's hand never strayed below the bottom of her uniform's shirt like this Prince's hand was, either. It lingered on her backside for a moment, and Hotaru felt herself bending into it, pushing backwards into his hand lightly, and she thought 'Ranma hasn't done this to me, either'.  
  
Then the sounds and sights from around her started tunneling back into focus, like someone was speeding up a slowed down record. Hotaru blinked as the man pulled back slightly from her. "And now... I must go. I am still new, and there are things I must see. I know you will understand." He gave a slight bow from the waist, the light smirk not leaving his face, although his eyes stayed rooted on Hotaru's. "Until we meet again, Hotaru Tomoe."  
  
And then he was gone, heading up the street, just walking slowly, yet covering incredible ground, ducking and weaving in and out of pedestrian traffic without seeming to move from side to side at all.  
  
Hotaru's head spun. What had just happened? How had it just happened? She didn't know. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. She could still feel his hand on her backside... could still remember pressing deeper into it... wanting his hand to clutch her tightly...  
  
Yet, she didn't want to. She didn't want to be feeling like this. It shouldn't be like this, not something she felt bad about, dirty, used. What had he done to her? What was going on in her head? Why hadn't she tried to push him away when he grabbed her around the back... or in other places? She was happy with Ranma, wasn't she? How was he going to take this? God, did this mean she wasn't as attracted to him as she thought?  
  
Hotaru hurried to school, head in a whirl, trying to forget that warm, dreamy kiss, and failing miserably.  
  
******  
  
At the top of the stairs, Ranma watched, a frown on his face. His arms were folded under the breasts of his female body, and his training gi had some slight sweat stains from the morning's session. He'd been about to try to catch up to Hotaru, and had stopped short at the top of the stairs, seeing that strange man again down below with his arm around Hotaru's waist, kissing her urgently.  
  
When his hand dropped below her belt, so to speak, Ranma's face grew hot. Angry, he was almost about to descend the stairs, and knock said stranger into next week... but he could still feel the power from this one. Something strange, something bad... something that said don't mess with me, son.  
  
Ranma didn't want to mess with him. Not yet. He'd seen some of the youma the senshi fought, and the weakest were maybe as strong as Kuno... perhaps Ryoga. The sense of power from this person was multiple orders of magnitude higher than those. Ranma knew he had a lot of work to do before he could even hope to break even in a match-up with these monsters.  
  
The last he'd faced had left him near-dead, and he was stuck in his female body until he had enough reserves to use his curse to change back without possibly suffering even worse side effects due to the near complete loss of energy. It had been a few weeks now, and he should be able to change in the next few days. Ranma hoped. He had to start some serious endurance training to be able to keep giving the energy output necessary to keep up with the senshi and youma.  
  
That still didn't solve this short-term problem, though. He knew Hotaru had to stay away from the blond-haired man... but if she felt anything for him... how could he say no to her? Did his own feelings count?  
  
No.  
  
They didn't.  
  
He'd been through this often enough in Nerima. Akane and the others, had they found anyone new to interest them, Ranma was expected to be happy to be relegated to the background, happy to have someone else walk in and trample over his love life - although at the same time, Akane and the others would expect Ranma to love - heck, even like - only them and look at no one else.  
  
Ranma was used to being put in the closet.  
  
But, perhaps this time, he shouldn't be put away until Hotaru was ready to play with him again.  
  
Oh, what the heck, he decided, letting a clenched fist he hadn't realised he'd shut open... I've broken up with girls before.  
  
Ranma turned, and headed for the springs to cool off and clean up.  
  
******  
  
"You know, it's not your fault," a voice said above him as he soaked. Ranma looked up, seemingly relaxed, but in truth, prepared to strike if the voice's owner was going to attack him. Natsumi floated down from the rooftop, where she'd taken a shine to observing the morning training sessions.  
  
"What's not my fault?"  
  
"That he's attracting her eye." Natsumi shrugged. "I thought you'd have known that. You seem to be pretty perceptive at times."  
  
"At times, yeah," Ranma agreed. "But when I get, I dunno, angry? Jealous? I kinda lose that ability."  
  
"And you're jealous? You're angry?" Natsumi cocked an eyebrow at him. He felt himself grow warm with anger and embarrassment... here was this girl, this youma general, asking incredibly personal things of him, of his feelings. Making assumptions, and poking her nose into his business. But then he forced himself to relax. It was her aura. For the moment, she seemed to exude a dark energy that had negative effects on people from time to time. It affected Ranma more often than anyone else in the dorm.  
  
"Actually... a little. Seeing him... do that... to Hotaru-chan... it was a little scary."  
  
"You know who he is."  
  
"Yeah. His ki matches that baby-thing we fought at the hospital."  
  
"Before my time," Natsumi sighed, taking up a position on a rock above the cold water spring, across from Ranma. "You know, he's only doing that to get at you."  
  
"I know. It still hurts, though, that she's not able to withstand his influence."  
  
"You felt it the day you found me."  
  
Ranma nodded. "I felt it. I felt what he did to my insides, too. I've... never felt that as a woman before, that kind of... arousal, I guess would be the word."  
  
"He exudes sex appeal like I exude... well, used to exude darkness and strength." Natsumi looked a little downcast. "I'm losing it all."  
  
"Your power?" Ranma asked. Natsumi nodded. "Isn't that a good thing for you? You can go back to your old life. Try it all again."  
  
"And I'll be bullied again," Natsumi snarled in reply, but Ranma noticed the slight glistening of her cheek as a tear escaped from her eye. "I don't want to be bullied anymore! I don't want to live in fear of people in my life! I want to -"  
  
"Then join us in the mornings. Or me in the evenings. I'll train you in self defence."  
  
Natsumi glared at him, as if daring Ranma to tell her the offer was a lie, something to hurt an enemy... a former enemy, she corrected herself. But no, his face remained composed, calm, relaxed. Eventually, she nodded. "What are you going to do about your girlfriend?"  
  
Ranma shook his head. "There's not a lot I can do," he admitted. "If she falls for him... there's nothing I can do. It's not my business, that's one thing I've learned in life. Women do what women want. It's my place to stand on the sidelines and be used when needed and hide myself away, putting my life on hold, when not." Ranma sounded bitter as he threw the words out. Natsumi found herself floating over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder in support.  
  
"The purple-haired one likes you too, you know," she said, softly.  
  
"Mitsuki?"  
  
"Yeah. That one. She's got the hots for you like you don't know. And Mars... phew! She's got more than an eye for you... she's got a hand with your name on it! You're well liked here. If little miss Saturn doesn't want to play, one of the others surely will."  
  
Ranma glanced at her sideways. "How do you know who they are?"  
  
"I've sensed their energy patterns in battle, remember? And these girls have the same patterns." Natsumi looked at Ranma askance. "You... haven't noticed, have you? That's not how you've been finding out... their disguise enchantment is too strong, even for you! Wow. I am impressed."  
  
"What? What enchantment?" Ranma asked.  
  
"Oh, it's not real magic, not like you know it, where everything's generated from the body's bio-energetic reserves... ki, you call it... this is technology that, even though it's ten thousand years old, is still a million years ahead of yours." Natsumi gestured with a hand. "You haven't noticed how alike the senshi look to the girls who live here? Wow."  
  
"Well, most of the senshi live here, yeah," Ranma said. "But not Mercury and Sailor Moon. I don't know where they come from."  
  
Natsumi stared disbelievingly at Ranma. "You really can't see it, can you? You've got to be told or shown... otherwise you can't see it. My god... that's bad. That's... well, that's powerful."  
  
Ranma looked down into the spring, confused. "I... I don't know them. And if all bar two of the senshi live here, why are Usagi and Ami living here instead? Why..." Something occurred to Ranma. As it had several times, in matter of fact, but everytime he thought on the senshi's identities, the ones he didn't know kept sliding from his mind's eye. And once again, Sailor Moon and Mercury slipped from his memories, leaving only the knowledge they were at certain events, things they said, not how they looked. He shook his head to clear it - nothing cleared. "I... think I know what you mean. I've got to ask them next tmie I see them."  
  
Natsumi sighed. "I'd tell you, but I think they'd kill me in return." She sighed again, looking up at the sky for a moment before looking back down at Ranma. "I... I think I will do what you said. Join you for training. I'll have no power soon... nothing that can save me from people. Nothing that can make me special again. I'll be Natsumi Otohime, younger sister of the narcoleptic weirdo. Oh, I can't wait."  
  
The sarcasm could have killed rhinos in Africa.  
  
"But before I'm completely useless," Natsumi said, leaning into Ranma's shoulder suddenly, her chin resting there as if it belonged, "I'm going to do one last thing with my powers. Ranma Saotome, I make you a new man!" She wrapped an arm around his neck, tilted his head back before he knew what was happening, and latched her lips onto his.  
  
He made to struggle, but felt something enter his body: something electrical, sending shivers of newfound power throughout his body. His fingers crackled with static.  
  
Then just when he thought he was going to explode, Natsumi pulled back, wiping at her mouth, a little confused. Ranma turned around so he could face her fully, and she tilted her head sideways a little in confusion. "You... you taste of Dar-"  
  
Natsumi's eyes opened wide, and she toppled over on one side. Ranma leapt out of the water, hurried to catch her before her head could hit the concrete surrounding the cold water spring, and started to panic - what if she was dead?  
  
But she wasn't. She was asleep. Sleeping normally. Not quite peacefully, but normally. Ranma nodded to himself. He noted that whatever she'd done to him, he couldn't feel it now. Perhaps it was something to re-energise his batteries, so to speak. But his ki levels felt the same as they had that morning. Then what hasd she done? That, Ranma didn't know.  
  
He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around him and tied it between his breasts before picking up Natsumi and taking her to a futon in an unused room. There he lay her out, pulled a blanket up over her still form, and left, closing the door quietly behind him.  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Gah. Writer's block. Anything worse? About the only good thing its done is let me work through some scenes from future chapters... which'll hopefully turn up in somewhat altered form, like the last scene in this chapter... there's one or two for the next few chapters as well. Bah.   
  
Anyways, next time on Love: I have absolutely no idea at this time. Oh, wait, I do: Natsumi goes home (yay!), Ranma finds out a dastardly secret about Hotaru (boo!), and the rest of the senshi start working in cheap bars and bad porno flicks (um... lost here, help out? ^^;). 


	6. Love 6

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 6  
  
** **  
  
  
Above her, far in the distance, Nemesis was sling-shotted out of the physical reach of the Moon Kingdom. Serenity knew where the faint pin prick of light was, visible by the naked eye only because time and space in the Kingdom was not what it was outside of the Kingdom. The dot grew steadily dimmer, and the elder Guardian of the planet turned, horrified to her.  
  
"Princess!" she howled, "How can your mother sacrifice a world of the Kingdom like that?"  
  
Serenity was lost for words, unable to speak, knowing what would happen as soon as the planet left the life-bearing energies of the Kingdom.  
  
"The same way the Queen could direct that comet to hit Mars," the senshi of Mars snarled. "Our worlds don't matter here anymore."  
  
That's not true! Serenity wanted to say, to explain that her mother was sacrificing entire worlds to try to save what remained of the Kingdom. As civilisation grew on the planet Earth below, as the balance between nature and order was upset, so the balance between light and dark was being lost. And with that unbalancing, the Dark Kingdom, led by Beryl, made their push on the resource and energy rich homeworlds of the Moon Kingdom, entering that which they had been denied at the founding of the Kingdoms.  
  
As Below, so Above.  
  
Queen Serenity had at first tried to negotiate. When the Librariums had fallen to the depravities that had engulfed the Utopia University whole, the planet's administrative staff had been evacuated and bombarded with asteroidal matter from orbiting forge-satellites. While staffs had been removed from the planet by warp gates and evacuation transports and temporal corridors making microjumps across the system, the planet's population had been decimated.  
  
Following the fall of Mercury, the Dark Kingdom Warhost attacked Mars, striking while the planetary defence fleets were hurriedly returning from Mercury. Zoicite, the Admiral of the Mercurian fleets, returned to find Mars' population held at ransom: the fleets to join the Dark Kingdom, else every man, woman and child on the planet would be slaughtered. Zoicite's loyalty to the Kingdom wavered for but a moment; he was an honourable man, and his duty, his loyalty, as was that of every member of the Kingdom, was to his King and Queen.  
  
The King had paused in indecision. Queen Serenity didn't.  
  
Zoicite was about to open fire on the enemy's encampments when, appearing via temporal corridor originating in the realSystem's Oort cloud, a mighty snowball, fully fifty kilometres across, sped past the orbiting ships. Dark Kingdom forces hurried to their own transport vessels as the snowball erupted in gas and dust, heated by the passage through the corridor and by the much nearer location to the sun, blew through the planet's atmosphere as if it didn't exist, and impacted in the planet. Nothing remained of the northern six hundred kilometres of the world, three kilometres of the crust had simply been shrugged off into space.  
  
Half of the Warhost hadn't survived, but the surviving numbers were bolstered by Zoicite's defection in horror to the Dark Kingdom's Queen Beryl. The King had made a personal plea to Zoicite under a flag of truce, but the Admiral, in anger and misdirected hatred, struck the King to bring the pain he felt to Queen Serenity. The King had died in Martian orbit, and the war paused for a moment while both sides regrouped.  
  
But then Venus fell, and Saturn, and Neptune, and Uranus. All that were left in the Moon Kingdom were the planets Jupiter, Pluto, Nemesis and the Moon itself.  
  
And now, in the latest battle, Beryl's forces had set off a chain reaction of graviton bombs across the surface of Nemesis, thrusting the planet from its normal orbit and out into the cold depths of space.  
  
Nemesis turned to the Princess, pain in her eyes, anger in her heart. "I can hear them, Princess, I can hear them dyi"  
  
There wasn't even a snip of sound as the planet passed from the heart of the Kingdom. Once outside the barriers, the planet reverted to realSystem physical laws, and the inhabitants of Nemesis simply ceased to exist. This, of course, included the senshi of the planet. All that was left was a ball of energy, starting as the bright blue of the world Nemesis, fading to a dull grey, then black. The ball of energy hovered for a moment, then shot back into the palace, where Princess Serenity's mother would harness the energies of the fallen warrior for other purposes.  
  
The guardians of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto now stood around the Princess. Mars was angry at the reason behind the loss of her homeworld, and only the fact that the Princess, the girl who she was assigned to protect, was just as horrified as the other Guardians.  
  
Well, most. Pluto and Saturn took different views on such things, preferring more to cut out the heart of a living creature to save it from cancers in the extremities. Saturn herself had been responsible for the destruction of Venus when the Venusian fleets had defected also in response to Zoicite's passionate speeches on the horrors the Moon Kingdom's Queen was committing to keep her ever more fragile grip on power, her need to stay in control of everything. The Martian and Jovian fleets had soon followed.  
  
While the Neptunian and Uranian fleets still fought for the Kingdom, they were being beaten back on all fronts, day in, day out. The future looked bleak, and while the Queen claimed victory would be theirs, even the everyday population of the Moon Kingdom was beginning to realise that something was wrong, there were too many communication blockages, too many disruptions to everyday services, too many incomplete news reports.  
  
Endymion stood off to one side of the group, watching up into the skies, at the planet he had been named protector of. Earth cast a bluish light over the green lunar landscapes, and over everyone. It was full this morning, shining the brightest it did in the lunar dinurnal cycle. Behind him stood Luna and Artemis, the advisors to Serenity.  
  
And then, as the bodyguards and their Princess stood, mostly quiet apart from Mars' angry accusations, Endymion noticed something in the sky. He looked back to his bethrothed, and then to Luna. "It comes," he said, quietly.  
  
Luna nodded. "The Queen felt the breakthrough would come this morning."  
  
"Too few ships remain in the fleet to protect the Moon's protective shell," Artemis agreed.  
  
"What?" asked the Princess, distracted from the tirade. The calm statements even made Mars pause and look up.   
  
Saturn sighed. "It is time."  
  
"Not yet, please, Saturn," Luna begged. "Give us another few minutes! You know the Queen could be wrong, you know we might yet triumph here! What if you took to the skies in our defence?"  
  
"Then if I fell, so would the Kingdom," Saturn said, before rising up into the skies, whirling the Silence Glaive in her hands. The Senshi looked to one another.  
  
"What will happen now?" Serenity asked Luna, before the growing roaring noise from above drowned out her voice. She barely noticed Pluto gating out to her planet's command centre, as planned.  
  
"Your mother will use the energy of the destruction of the Kingdom to seal the Dark Kingdom forces back in their realm, where they belong," Luna said. "Pluto will ride out the destruction of the Kingdom, and rebuild when it is possible, using the people on the planet Earth. And you... all of you Senshi... will be reborn on Earth. Given new lives, It will be your destiny to resurrect the Moon Kingdom, and rule over the solar system in the name of Light."  
  
But by this time, there was too much noise. Nothing could be heard, even the glaive's sound was blanked by the noise it was creating. The light pouring from the glaive grew steadily, as did the light from approaching star ships.  
  
And then, for a scant moment, time stopped. Serenity saw the Senshi around her, eyes lowered, forms kneeling in fealty, Endymion's eyes locked on hers, his lips mouthing the words "I will find you," before it all disappeared in white...  
  
******  
  
Usagi woke up holding her head. Three dreams in as many days. Possibly of historic content, great moments in the life of the Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom. Her early life, the beginnings of the war with the Dark Kingdom, and the end of the war.  
  
After that final eternal moment, the barriers holding back realspace from the Kingdom were shattered, and the Moon Kingdom died, along with everyone existing in its boundaries. But at the same time, the Dark Kingdom host in this dimension was sealed, supposedly for eternity.  
  
Eternity, Usagi was slowly becoming to realise, wasn't as long as it once was.  
  
Oh, to a human from the Moon Kingdom, the normal human lifespan of seventy or eighty years was but an eyeblink - the Senshi would still be around in over a thousand years, and if they were unlucky, would look as if they were moving out of their twenties. It wasn't just the fact that they were Senshi that allowed such lifespans, either, but also spill-on effects from the Time Gate on Pluto.  
  
Conceivably, it could sustain them until the sun swelled out huge in a few thousand million years. And possibly longer.  
  
But a human wouldn't last as long.  
  
Strangely enough, memory barely lasted as long as an average human from Earth.  
  
Case in point, Usagi forgot it was a day for university. She told herself she'd have to tell Ami about this latest dream when she got out of bed later in the day, and rolled back under her blankets.  
  
******  
  
Ranma's eyes followed Hotaru's movements as she parried, thrust, kicked, blocked, blocked, parried and kicked again across the designated sparring zone. Rei's movements were getting good - years of practise at being a Shrine Maiden and learning some basic martial arts in the process paid off in spades for her.  
  
Rei snapped out a kick, dropping the leg quickly, pivoted, and snapped out another. Ranma nodded. "Good Rei, good. But lean a little further back. You're committing yourself to moving forward with that posture, something that could be anticipated and -"  
  
Rei made the same move, and caught a fist in the stomach as Hotaru ducked the kick and stood up under her as she brought her foot down forward of her other foot.  
  
"- prepared for," Ranma finished, as he watched the wind go out of Rei's sails. "Match over!" He called a little louder. Hotaru completed the move she was in the middle of, dropping a foot onto Rei's toes. The older woman yelped and finished the process of folding up.  
  
Ranma glared at her a little sternly. "Match over means match over, Hotaru."  
  
She cocked her head to one side, almost cheekily. "Sorry, sempai." Ranma got the impression she wasn't all that apologetic. But he'd have words with her later.  
  
"Baths and breakfast, people. Tomorrow I start us sparring in pairs." That brought a couple of groans, but Mitsuki looked a little thoughtful, and helped Rei to her feet.  
  
"Come on," she said. "I think we should pair up. I mean, we've both got a good reason to pair up against a certain someone..."  
  
Mitsuki's voice trailed off as she led Rei inside the dormitory's main building, heading for the hot springs out the back. Ranma stooped to start clearing up some of the weapons he'd crafted for combat sparring, stacking them in a neat pile to take them back to the small storage shed around the side of the dorm.  
  
There wasn't a noise, but he felt someone looking at him. He looked up, feeling conscious suddenly of the weight on his chest and the way his girl form's breasts bounced energetically in his training gi. He didn't know why he was suddenly conscious of it; it was something he'd gotten used to a long time ago. But this felt... different.  
  
Hotaru was staring at him from the doorway, head cocked to one side, shoulders raised to the other, her hips tilted slightly as well. One leg was a little forward from the other, and a hand crossed her chest, lightly touching the door frame with a soft caress. There was an enigmatic smile on her lips.  
  
"Hotaru-chan?" Ranma asked, feeling a little more than self-conscious now. Something was definitely up, something felt wrong.  
  
"Yes, sempai?" she replied, in a slightly teasing tone.  
  
"Did you... want something?"  
  
"Oh Sempai..." Hotaru breathed, then turned to head into the Ai Sou. Just before she entered, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "How long are you going to look like a girl, sempai? I want to do adult things with you." And then she was gone.  
  
Leaving a very worried Ranma. This wasn't like her. Had that kiss done something to her yesterday? He'd already decided he was better off single. Perhaps that girl years ago had been correct in her statement, being with people, being near them, it hurt you more than was worth it. Perhaps he shouldn't have broken up with Akane, for that matter. He didn't need to hope for a happy marriage - he'd already known it wouldn't be happy, but simply okay punctuated with common bouts of violence directed at him.  
  
Physical pain he could handle, at least. It was all this emotional stuff that sucked.  
  
Natsumi Otohime, the one-time General of this evil Dark Kingdom type, she'd said it wasn't his fault. She wasn't herself at the moment, Hotaru was falling under the influence of someone for whom exuding sex appeal was like plants making oxygen - it just happened as a side effect of being alive.  
  
That didn't make it any easier for Ranma to take. He was hurt. Very hurt.  
  
******  
  
Inside, Makoto gazed at Ranma from the kitchen window as he replaced all the training gear into the storage shed with a concerned eye. He looked... down. Dejected. Defeated. It wasn't a look she saw on him often, usually he had an aura of confidence around him. Even when losing a fight, she hadn't seen him look this much like someone had just killed his kitten.  
  
Behind her, Ami tapped through the morning's emails on her laptop. She knew the morphological Mercury Computer hadn't been designed for quite this use, but it did the job perfectly - it was better than having a satellite network connection. There were a few from Keitaro, one of which was asking if she or any of her friends had seen one of his friend's little sister. She quickly typed in a reply while politely eating a small bowl of rice.  
  
Two boxes resided on the floor, one black, one white. They had small eye holes in the front, and were facing where Usagi would normally be sitting.  
  
"Really," said the black box, "You'd expect Usagi to be up by this time."  
  
"Ahh, Luna," said the white box, "You also know Usagi. Any minute now, she'll come running downstairs, screaming about how sunspots made her alarm fail, making her sleep in."  
  
"It won't be sunspots," Ami said, distracted. "That was last week's excuse."  
  
Mitsuki yawned from her seat, covering her mouth with one hand while the other continued toweling her purple hair dry. "Some princess. Is it too late for me to vote someone else into the position?"  
  
"Now, Sailor Nemesis, sleeping in occasionally is no excuse to tell her she can't be the Moon Princess any more," the black box commented.  
  
"And you know how much she'd cry if she did get told that," the white box added drily.  
  
"That's a point," Mitsuki conceeded.  
  
"My question is: why do you have us in these rediculous boxes?" the black box asked.  
  
Mitsuki sighed. "You really haven't seen Ranma when he, uh, sees cats. Not really. I'd prefer not to have a repeat of our date here."  
  
"We've seen his reaction, and he was most restrained."  
  
"I also don't want him marking his territory. It's, uh, most undignified."  
  
Hotaru sauntered in, displaying more energy than she had in the time any already in the room had ever known she possessed. She was dressed in her school uniform already, grabbed a few things she'd prepared the night before for lunch that she'd left in the fridge, and prepared to head out. She caught the tail end of Mitsuki's comment. "Oh," she pouted, "I'd rather see that much more manly side to my sempai." She sauntered out of the room.  
  
Silence.  
  
"I think Hotaru's growing up," Makoto finally broke the silence, still gazing at the door.  
  
The black box sighed. "I think it's more than a few hormones."  
  
"It is," a girl said, a little sleepily, from the doorway.  
  
Makoto, Mitsuki and Ami instantly recognised her. As did Rei, who'd stepped in from behind her. The young girl, the VR headset resting above her eyes, the stance... one of their latest and greatest foes.  
  
"You!" Rei shrieked. "I gave a panty shot to a bunch of horny guys thanks to you!" She raised a hand to slap the younger girl, but then realised she couldn't feel the dark forces she associated with the enemy any longer from her. She paused, obviously still considering the blow, but the wind had been metaphorically taken out of her sails, and she was almost paralysed with indecision.  
  
The girl turned, and looked up at her. "I... think I've got to be sorry. For something. But... I can't remember a lot about what's happened the last few months. Can... someone tell me?"  
  
"You really don't remember?" Makoto asked, as Usagi pushed in the doorway behind Rei.  
  
"Hey, Rei, quit hogging all the space! Some of us are late for class you ARGH!" she announced upon stumbling across Natsumi. "What's SHE doing here? I don't wanna be thrown into another... uh..." Usagi's brain caught up with the fact everyone else seemed to be in a light state of shock, but not overly alarmed. Subtly, she relaxed, but rounded on the girl. "What are you doing here? Are you planning to tell everyone -"  
  
"Tell everyone what, Usagi?" Ranma asked from the doorway. He made his way across to the bench, and grabbed himself something to eat before turning to Natsumi. "Did you have a good sleep, Natsumi?"  
  
"Yes, sempai," Natsumi answered, bowing her head slightly. "Uh... do you know why I'm here?" she asked, a little shyly, a little worried herself.  
  
"You were possessed by an evil force that wanted to take over the world, and then you pissed off the wrong guy, he had you beaten up, and I rescued you from the gutter. Brought you back here, where you turned back into an unpossessed human." Ranma shrugged as he took a quick bite of rice. "Simple story, really."  
  
"Do I know you?" Natsumi asked, stepping to one side from the door, keeping Rei in her sights. The red-haired girl seemed to know something, but Natsumi wasn't too sure about the whole possession story. "Why am I here?" she repeated.  
  
Ranma shook his head as he found somewhere to sit while he virtually inhaled his rice. "Because I brought you here when you... uh... got beaten up by your former boss. He's, uh, not being a very nice person at the moment."  
  
"Evil people never are," Makoto commented drily from one of the benches. "Ranma, you know who she is, don't you?"  
  
"Yeah, I do," Ranma nodded. "She's Natsumi Otohime. Former Dark General. She -"  
  
"How do you know about the Dark Generals?" Usagi demanded.  
  
"Uh... cause I fight with Sailor Moon and her friends? How do you know?" Ranma also wanted to know.  
  
"Uh... this isn't the time for that," Makoto interjected. Rei agreed.  
  
"Can we stick to the facts here, please? Ranma, what *is* she doing here?"  
  
"She'd been used and abused by her boss. So I brought her here." Ranma shrugged. "To recover. She was no threat."  
  
"How do you know that?" Usagi exploded. "We've had... uh, my friends have had more experience dealing with Dark Kingdom creeps than you have, Ranma, we know what they're capable of!"  
  
"Maybe so, but I know people, and I know people who are trying to hurt or kill my friends, Usagi. And Natsumi didn't feel like that at all."  
  
Usagi exploded again, "So you threatened all our lives by bringing an enemy into our midst because of a HUNCH?"  
  
"My hunches are better than your best exam guesses!" Ranma retorted heatedly. "And I'd even trust my guesses better than your most learned statements!"  
  
Both Ranma and Usagi leant over the table, getting closer and closer to one another's faces, death in their eyes as the insults and bile ramped up quickly. Makoto grabbed Usagi and pulled her back, Rei did the same to Ranma, who gave Rei a weird glance as to where her hands slipped while pulling her back.  
  
"Ow, Rei, do you have to be so rough?"  
  
"That's enough, both of you!" Makoto scolded. "Usagi, stop being stupid. Ranma... knows what he's doing. I trust his judgment, Usagi, you should too. We all know him, we've all fought him, we trust him to watch our backs."  
  
"Uh, excuse me," Natsumi piped up from the sidelines, "but isn't sempai a girl?" She squeezed certain bits of Ranma's anatomy to prove this was indeed the case. Ranma's mouth dropped open in shock. Rei looked a little jealous. "Yeah, these feel real. So why are you guys calling her a man?"  
  
"It's a very long story," Ranma said, still glaring daggers at Usagi.  
  
Usagi glared right back at him. "That still doesn't explain -" She cut herself off as Makoto's knuckles dug a little deeper into her back.  
  
"Quiet, Usagi-chan," she warned quietly.  
  
Ami continued tapping on her laptop oblivious to it all. Mitsuki smirked from one of the cupboards where she was leaning, opposite to Natsumi. She glanced over at the young girl.  
  
"Oh, don't worry about them, they're always like this," she explained with a wave of her hand.  
  
"Anyway," Ranma continued. "I brought her here to recover and rest, as she needed it and was no threat to us. That was two days ago. Yesterday, she came to me. We talked a bit more, and then she gave up this... dark energy that was within her, so she could keep on living."  
  
"Once the Dark Kingdom gets its claws into you, you can't get free!"  
  
"*Cough*Mamoru*cough*" said Rei.  
  
"*Cough*Chibi-Usa*cough*" said Makoto.  
  
"Hey, don't look at me, I don't know who the hell they're talking about," Mitsuki muttered. "Although that Mamoru was kinda cute... Oh but wait, Keitaro?"  
  
Usagi's eyes slid around to her, daggers now redirected.  
  
"Saved ya, lover boy," Mitsuki said, blowing a kiss at Ranma and sweeping from the kitchen. "Bye bye, boys and girls, I'm off to class."  
  
silence reined, only broken by the sound of steam blowing from Usagi's ears. "That Mitsuki, she's getting too big for her boots!" Usagi stalked from the kitchen as well, gathering her bag from the doorway and leaving with murder in her eyes. Ami sighed, and folded her laptop closed.  
  
"I'd best head to the university as well," she said quietly. "I've got a free period this morning, and I want to do some studying in the library."  
  
"They're rebuilt it already?" Ranma asked, confused.  
  
"No. It's a big university, there's a number of libraries," Ami said before waving and departing.  
  
That left Rei, Makoto, Ranma and Natsumi. Now that the more hot-headed people had left, the tension in the room eased considerably.  
  
"Ranma, was it really safe having her here?" Makoto asked quietly.  
  
"Hey! I'm in the room here!" Natsumi spoke up.  
  
Ranma gestured for her to come to the table. "Yeah. She's fine. She was fine, too. She... had her reasons for being what she was. I think she's learnt her lesson from it all now."  
  
Natsumi shook her head. "I can't remember much at all. All I really know is I... had a dream. Where I was stronger than anyone. And didn't have to put up with anything, least of all bullies."  
  
"You've got a second chance, Natsumi," Ranma said, quietly. "Don't waste it. If you want to change your life, if you want to change you, don't take the easy way, okay? Do it the hard way. You'll appreciate it better if you earn it yourself rather than cheating to get to the goal."  
  
Natsumi nodded, digesting that.  
  
"And now," Ranma said, standing, "I'd better get you home. I've... also got someone else to see this morning. And I want to make sure you're home safely before I go to... see her."  
  
******  
  
Mutsumi Otohime was very happy to see her younger sister again. The woman wrapped her arms around the girl and wouldn't let go, smothering Natsumi in her promenant breasts until the younger girl had to break free and gasp for a few moments to regain her breath. Mutsumi thanked Ranma for finding her sister, and Keitaro appeared from within the Hinata Sou's main building to say hi and see what all the commotion was about. He recognised Ranma's female body, and remembered something bad about Natsumi, but before he could say anything, a turtle with strap-on scramjets bounced off his skull, and he went down unconscious, while a girl with what looked to be African heritage chased after the turtle with a remote control.  
  
Ranma left shortly after.  
  
Now, in Nerima again. The last time he'd been here, he'd had trouble. Big trouble. He still wasn't sure what that powder Nabiki had blown at him was supposed to do; he guessed it was supposed to make him impotent or something. Considering the fact that everything seemed to be working fine he guessed whomever had given it to her - Cologne, most likely - had screwed her over. Sold her a bunch of magical beans.  
  
He wandered up one of the streets, towards the school. He had business there, this he knew.  
  
It was well past time he brought this to a close, he felt. Some things had to be ended. The whole Nerima routine was getting old. Could still cause a lot of trouble, if Nabiki ever got people to go around Kuno. And heck, if Kasumi ever decided to weigh in on Nabiki's side - and considering Nabiki and Akane were her baby sisters, that was likely - Ranma would end up facing all of Nerima's antisocial crowds of thugs and former friends.  
  
He found himself at the school gates presently, and paused, unsure of whether he should enter or not. This wasn't neutral ground anymore, he had a feeling the last battle would still be fought here. Too much had happened on these grounds for him to feel comfortable there, now he was safe in his new life. Too much brought back memories.  
  
But things had to be faced, brought to the surface.  
  
Enough was enough.  
  
He stepped inside. "I'm home," he murmured. The few students who were spread out about the front courtyard turned towards him casually, and fell silent, conversations drying up and people moving back towards walls and behind trees and other safe havens from the latest coming storm.  
  
Ranma only had to wait a few minutes before the front doors slammed open and Nabiki stormed out. "I don't know how you twisted Kuno around, Ranma, but -"  
  
Ranma held up a finger. "Shush, Nabiki. I'm not here for you." He nodded back at the doors. "I'm here for her."  
  
Hotaru glared at him from a distance. "I did it for you," she pouted.  
  
"I know. But it's time to end this. I can handle my fights by myself, Hotaru-chan."  
  
"I'm not your Hotaru-chan anymore, Ranma."  
  
"What's happened, Hotaru?" Ranma asked.  
  
"She's been acting weird since some guy turned up this morning to talk to her," Nabiki muttered to Ranma, before realising who she was talking to. Then she turned away in disgust and stormed off again.  
  
"What's happened, Ranma? I found someone else."  
  
"So that's who Ranma dumped Akane for?" Ranma heard someone in the crowd say. "Wow, she's cute."  
  
"He's not your type, Hotaru," Ranma warned.  
  
"How would you know? What do you know about him?"  
  
Ranma took a breath. "I know what he does to me, Hotaru. He makes me feel tingly when I look at him. My knees go weak when he looks at me. I find it hard to breathe when he's near me, I want to cry when he goes away." Hotaru's expression softened for a scant moment, but she pouted again fairly quickly. "I know what you're going through with him, Hotaru-chan, and you should know... it's not real."  
  
"Of course it's real!" she shouted back at him.  
  
"It's not real! He's not good for you!" How else do you yell the guy you're infatuated with is a Dark General? "He's a wolf in sheep's clothing! He's... he's worse than I used to be!"  
  
Hotaru paused, then walked down to Ranma, standing right up close. She lifted a hand, stroked it along his jawline, gazing up into his eyes ever so gently, ever so softly, then closed her eyes and kissed him on the lips. Ranma returned the kiss, with passion, lowering his head when Hotaru stepped back from him.  
  
"He's real to me, Ranma. And he kisses better. And he's not afraid to have sex with a sixteen year old."  
  
The courtyard fell silent. Ranma's heart stopped beating, grew cold with ice.  
  
And then grew warm and bubbly.  
  
He turned, to see the blond-haired man standing at the gates, behind him. Smiling. The scent of roses wafted across the courtyard, and Ranma's heart swooned, but he fought back against the attraction, pushed it back into its box. "You can't have her," he said, more to break the sudden silence, prove to himself that Ranma hadn't gone deaf.  
  
The man smiled again.  
  
"He doesn't have to have me, Ranma," Hotaru breathed in his ear. She stepped lightly across to stand beside him. "Yoshihiro already has me, sempai. Body and soul. He gave himself to me this morning... in ways you can't give yourself to me, or just won't. I'm sorry, Ranma, but you lost... to the better man." She shrugged.  
  
"You can't do this...!" Ranma pleaded. "Take me, instead. I mean nothing to the others!"  
  
"That's why he's picked me," Hotaru smirked. "Thanks in part to you, he's down a general. Yoshihiro needs someone to take Natsumi's place. That someone will be me."  
  
"What's she talking about, Ranma?" Nabiki asked, despite herself.  
  
"He's an evil bastard trying to destroy the world, and she's one of the biggest guns in the universe," Ranma said, his stomach dropping into a deep pit of despair.  
  
"You don't say."  
  
"Doesn't your Master have anything to say for himself?"  
  
"Someone as good as my Rose Prince has no need of words for the likes of you, Ranma." Hotary looked sarcastically apologetic. "I'm so very sorry. My heart is bleeding." She touched a hand to her chest in mock sympathy.  
  
Ranma looked at the ground. "I've failed you, then. I tried to protect you. I didn't want you to -"  
  
"To what?" Hotaru looked amused now. "Ranma, I don't need protecting. I don't need helping. I never did. I'm the strongest of the Bishoujo Senshi, the prettiest of the soldiers in sailor suits. I am become death, destroyer of worlds. I have destroyed such before, I will again. And if my Yoshihiro wishes it to be so, this world will be next."  
  
The blond man looked down at Hotaru. She looked up, concerned, a little upset. "But you said I could play with him a little longer! Oh, alright." She thrust a hand high up in the air, reaching for the sky. "Saturn Dark Transformation - Make Up!" High-speed winds whipped up around the school, blowing over at least one tree Ranma could see. Hotaru's clothes ripped and tore off, into tiny shreds, which then reformed into her Saturn fuku. But the colours were all wrong. Where once royal purple resided, now only a dark matt black lurked. The style was slightly different, too. The skirt was cut shorter, higher on the hips. The join with the fuku itself was much more angular, sharp. small spikes adorned the shoulder guards, and her tiara was a bright, shining silver, with a black gem inlaid into the centre. her knee-high boots now also came higher up her thighs. The only thing seemingly unchanged was the Silence Glaive that she held in her hands.  
  
"Sensei. You taught me well. You trained me, when I was pretending to be weak, to appeal to you. To make you interested in me. Well, now you get to see how well you trained me." Mistress Saturn cocked the Silence Glaive to a ready position as Yoshihiro stepped back from the pair. "Ranma Saotome: now you die!"  
  
And what was formerly Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, now Mistress Saturn of the Dark Kingdom, leapt at Ranma, right through his unready defences.  
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED...  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Took a few days to write. This might seem a bit rushed in places... it's not, it's got everything that was supposed to be in it. With... something of a different ending. One thing about not writing so fast is that I've got a lot more time to think on the ramifications of certain actions. The end of this chapter is the result of some of that work.  
  
Hopefully, the next chapter will be as exciting as its seeming to be in my head already...  
  
Next time, on Love: The battle royale kicks off! Mistress Saturn versus Ranma! Who will win? Who will lose? Will good triumph over evil? Will we ever really know? 


	7. Love 7

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
IMPORTANT NOTE: During the writing of this chapter, our beloved dog, a poodle called Georgie, died in my father's hands this morning, Sunday 7th July 2002. As she was running around fine last night when I last saw her, the fact she died so suddenly, in a series of fits, has kinda shocked me. I'm guessing this will impact somewhere on the writing in this and later chapters... I'm sorry if it does so, but I think it is understandable. As such, I'd like to dedicate the rest of this series to our dog, Georgie. May she be forever more able to chase birds, gorge on avocadoes, sleep in late and keep people warm in bed, as well as eat whenever and whatever she wants, where ever she may now be. She will be sorely missed by myself, my mother, my sisters, my two year old niece who adored Georgie, our cat, Tammy, and most of all, my father, who she lived with after my parents split up last year. Thank you for reading.  
  
  
  
  
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us. -- Ben Franklin  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 7  
  
** Immortal Combat **  
  
  
Ranma wasn't ready.  
  
That was all anyone knew as the self-proclaimed Mistress Saturn leapt at him from across the school's front yard. To those assembled, it seemed as if she took forever to cover that distance in the one bound she took, yet they knew at the same time, that effect was only illusion: she'd covered that distance in less than an eyeblink.  
  
Mistress Saturn's knee kicked up into Ranma's chin. She didn't feel it, but Ranma felt the force of an annoyed senshi drill through his teeth and knock him back into the school's building. He thanked kami that he'd hardened up through his years of training, and had taken somewhat worse kicks, but it was a hard time remembering when.  
  
It didn't help he was in his female body still, softer and weaker than his male form. Not so noticeable to normal people, perhaps, but in a fight such as this promised to be, Ranma knew it would count. The only real things it had going for it was the speed and agility he could display.  
  
Balance could be a problem, though, if he fought to the exclusion of everything else.  
  
It was certainly a problem now, Ranma getting to his feet, the world tilted at a weird angle to his senses. There was a flash of pseudomotion in the corner of his eyes, and he dropped, ducking down until his head touched the ground, and whipped a foot directly up behind him.  
  
Contact. And a redirection of Saturn's path of travel to a new angle, where she made a new entrance into a room adjacent to Ranma's landing area. He righted himself, in time to note that Saturn was not getting up.  
  
No. It couldn't be that easy. Not Saturn. Not Hotaru.  
  
Ranma hadn't had any illusions about the sickly-looking girl once he'd found out her secret. The power she displayed was awesome, he knew she was capable of some serious power displays before he found out anything concrete. Like that whole blowing up planets thing. Likewise, he'd known that she wasn't as ill as she made herself out to be, especially as time had gone by. But it was something they did. It was... personality. Closeness that neither really felt they could otherwise display.  
  
And now possibly never would again.  
  
But that didn't hold with Ranma. He knew they would be back together at some point. She'd helped him grow up, leave behind his childishness. Mostly, anyway. Now it was his turn to help her.  
  
What she'd said moments ago, that wasn't her talking - it couldn't have been. He knew that the Dark Kingdom overlord-guy... this Yoshihiro? He knew that he had the power to control minds. He affected minds with power, at least. Ranma thought it surprising none of the other senshi could feel him like both him and Hotaru had... Hotaru, yeah, that she could feel his presence wasn't a surprise. But Ranma? Unless he was sitting on some kind of huge power source not even he knew about, he wasn't even in the same league as Hotaru in terms of raw energy.  
  
Which left him a little confused there. So, maybe it was a by-product of his martial arts training, and his skills in registering ki auras.  
  
Regardless, she still wasn't moving.  
  
What she'd said had hurt Ranma. Badly. And he wanted to kick out at something. But that was the immature Ranma, what he'd been trying to leave behind. The mature guy that Hotaru had remoulded him as... well, that Ranma would walk into the room, try again to bring Hotaru back to her senses.  
  
He knew she was faking it. He knew there was no way that kick could have injured her.  
  
Not seriously, at least. Maybe knocked her about a little, and possibly the wall had something to do with it, but hell, Hotaru... Saturn was a senshi. Stronger than human. Probably damned near immortal and invulnerable by Ranma's standards.  
  
Yet he knew they could be hurt. Those monsters they'd been fighting for a few months now routinely hurt the senshi. Scratches, bruises, bite marks, gravel rash, burns, frostbite (in one case) among other injuries. Hotaru usually patched up anything minor, even some major, although there really hadn't been any serious injuries Ranma had known of.  
  
Apart from his own.  
  
Fighting that youma hadn't necessarily been the smartest thing he could have done, not expending all his ki like that, but hey, he'd come out on top, alive, and was kicking again, several weeks later.  
  
Mistress Saturn was completely motionless.  
  
Damn it. Ranma knew what came next. This was in every movie he'd ever seen from America. And whether it had been subtitled or dubbed, he knew what came next: the hero turned over his former best friend/partner (who turned out to be the killer or other bad guy) thinking they were dead... and lo! They weren't and got kicked.  
  
Just if Ranma copped another kick like he'd just taken, he wouldn't just be bruised, he'd be counting the several hundred thousand yen under his pillow in the morning.  
  
And then spending it on dental work.  
  
She was faking it. But he had no choice. He felt like an actor now, stumbling lightly into the room, trying to clear his head and ready himself for another attack from his beloved. What would it be? The way she was lying, if she could just bend her spine backwards a little, she could give him a double-kick to the chin, flip up and carry on. Possibly make a punch as high as Ranma's stomach if she twisted a bit... or was she expecting him to turn her over? She'd have a much wider range of movement then. And could possibly fire off an attack or two at him. Damn. Too many choices.  
  
His feet felt the urge to make a Saotome Special Move right then and there, but hell, he hadn't come this far for, he hadn't given his heart this much to, this girl to back out now. His feet reached her. He squatted down next to her shoulder. All he could do was tense up in the right places, relax in the others, and hope like heck he could move before she could connect with more than a glancing blow.  
  
She was lying mostly facedown, but one eye looked off to the side, staring in Ranma's general direction. It wasn't glazed, and in fact, while he watched, it blinked, then the pupil swivelled to stare at his face.  
  
"Sempai," she said, quietly, levelly. "Sempai. Why are you doing this?"  
  
"I do this because I care," Ranma said, quietly. "I don't want to fight you, Hotaru, but if you continue, I've got to. Because it's not just me you're hurting."  
  
"Is that all you're worried about?" Saturn asked, voice still level apart from a light questioning lilt at the end of the sentence.  
  
"Look around," Ranma said, not taking his eyes off Saturn below him. "These are my friends too."  
  
"Didn't you know, Ranma? When you go out with a girl, you're expected to lose all your friends."  
  
Ranma stayed silent through the semi-flippant remark. Saturn still failed to move.  
  
Then he asked: "Why aren't you fighting, then, if that's what you want to do?"  
  
"Because I'm bored already. We all know how this is going to end, Sempai. I'm going to grind your bones into paste, and eat you alive." Her voice took on a slight touch of animation. And enthusiasm, Ranma wasn't pleased to hear. "I'll spray you with hot water first, though, because I want to see you naked. And not in your girl body. I want to do things to you."  
  
"Hotaru - you said it yourself: we're not an item anymore. And I don't do things like that with girls I'm not going out with."  
  
"Oh, but I can do what I want, Ranma. That's what Yoshihiro did to me." Saturn smiled.  
  
It wasn't pleasant.  
  
"He set me free."  
  
Ranma dodged the punch, and the follow-up punch, the triple kick series she threw at him then. He replied with a slower-than-normal speed amarguriken that still impacted seventy or so times on her face and upper torso. The sweeping kick behind her ankles the amarguriken had diverted attention for found its way behind her, then brought back suddenly, and Mistress Saturn found herself on the floor again. She growled, and fingers clenched into the flooring, tearing furrows as she pushed herself up. Ranma was impressed - her fingernails didn't so much as flake or scratch.  
  
"You're really trying to get me angry, aren't you?" she said.  
  
Ranma countered, "You're doing enough in that respect for me to need to help." He swept out another foot at her ankles, hoping to keep her down until he could break through whatever conditioning had been forced upon her, but there was a slight black flash, and she vanished, reappearing behind him almost instantly in another flash of black and slamming an elbow into his unprotected back.  
  
His chin bit deep into the concrete, and the pain forced up once more through his jaw reminded him of just how much stronger his opponent was.  
  
Ranma couldn't win this fight - hell, couldn't even survive! - if he was going to tie his hands behind his back and lower his head to the chopping block. There was no way he could bring Hotaru back to her senses by letting her beat him. He had to survive. She was strong; she could take whatever he dished out, and more.  
  
He converted his downward movement into the floor from Saturn's blow into a forward roll, springing out energetically into a wall, then catapulting back at her, firing ki through the lower half of his body to accelerate his forward speed. Fists outstretched, the moment before he impacted in Saturn's midsection, he extended his body's ki forward from his hands, to create an accelerated shockwave with his mass and momentum before he hit.  
  
When his body did connect, her interior defences were down already, having prepared for his body to hit her and been swept aside by an earlier blow than she was ready for. Saturn's breath gusted from her lungs, and her eyes opened wide. She dropped from the air to the floor again, on hands and knees, coughing and wheezing, trying to regain her breath once more.  
  
Ranma dropped down on the other side of her, brought his legs around and back into her gut, forcing more air out. Tears formed at the edges of saturn's eyes, and for a moment, he saw his Hotaru-chan, the one whom he'd promised and offered parts of himself he hadn't known existed. Before him, she seemed to melt, wilt, as Saturn curled up into a foetal posture.  
  
Shrinking within herself.  
  
Ranma stood over her, and was aware of people behind him.  
  
"Ah! The fair pig-tailed girl!" Kuno. Drat. "Hath the vile seductress posing as our Goddess been dispatched?" Kuno leaned forward past Ranma. "Ah. I see not. A noble gesture, to not kill one so fair and feminine, yet this is one evil creature that cannot be allowed to breathe again." He raised his bokken, touched it to his forehead in salute to his Goddess. "This dread corruption cannot be allowed to spread to others, including my fair pig-tailed girl." His bokken swept down, before Ranma could spring to stop its fall, but there was someone else there between them suddenly. No flash of movement, nothing Ranma or Kuno could note. He was just... there.  
  
Yoshihiro smiled at Ranma. The smile did strange things in Ranma's stomach and chest, hatching butterflies and tightening intercostals to the point Ranma almost physically found it hard to breathe. "My dear, this little game is for you and my girl yourselves. No one else need intercede on your behalf." He flicked his hand, which had caught Kuno's weapon, and Kuno found himself flung through the air and a pair of walls. When he hit the third, he sighed, hit the ground, and stayed there.  
  
It was then that Ranma really began to fear for his safety.  
  
******  
  
Akane pushed to the front of the crowd, which wasn't as hard as she'd have thought. Completely opposite to Ranma's usual fights in the school, people were running *away* from the sounds of combat. Akane didn't know why; usually everyone at Furinken High enjoyed watching the various grudge matches.  
  
She caught sight of Nabiki running as if the very demons of Hell were on her tail, and angled to intercept. She grabbed her older sister's arm, and pulled her to a stop. "Nabiki! What's going on? Why's everyone running away?"  
  
Nabiki's face was one of alarm. "They're tearing up the school!"  
  
"When Ranma's involved, they usually do," Akane bit back.  
  
"I mean, really! It's that Hotaru girl who started here recently! She's fighting Ranma!" Nabiki pulled herself free, and ran for the relative safety of the other side of the school's big thick exterior walls. Akane watched her go, jostled a few times by fleeing students. Then she turned, and headed for a look at this girl Nabiki had mentioned.  
  
Cold fire stoked up in her stomach as she considered the girls Ranma was sleeping with now. There was a girl called Hotaru. Cologne had warned Akane and the other Nerimaians who regularly fought around the ward about her. She was supposed to be insanely strong, devilish, deadly. Apparently, one of her predecessors had levelled the Amazonian village in China some centuries ago, some beautiful soldier for love and justice. Akane had laughed it off, but if Nabiki wasn't standing around taking bets, then something was up.  
  
And while Akane no longer counted Ranma as a loved one, let alone friend, he had saved her too many times for her not to rub in the fact he had brought all this pain and suffering on himself. She'd be sure to do that when he was broken and battered and looking for someone to fight for him. Kick him while he was down.  
  
She nodded to herself as she stepped out into the front school yard; that was a good plan. Start paying him back for the pain and suffering he caused her. Then she saw two things.  
  
The first was the front of the school. Kuno's legs could be seen through one of the gaping holes that now adorned the building. Classrooms were laid open. People streamed from the wreckage when they could. The fight going on inside was moving from floor to floor and room to room almost faster than Akane could make out. Ranma's opponent certainly moved a lot faster than he did on average - his amarguriken could still tip that average to his favour from time to time, but superfast punches and kicks couldn't be used to block or dodge the lazily-thrown punches and kicks that shattered the reinforced concrete of the building into dust. As such, Ranma looked to be on the losing side. She watched as he made a couple of powered-up ki attacks, which would slam his attacker (a girl in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots?) through a wall or two. But she'd get back up, and the blurring would begin again.  
  
The second was the blond-haired man, standing just in front of her. His black suit was untouched by the white concrete dust blowing on the wind - in fact, he didn' seem touched by the wind at all. It was almost as if he was a television image, projected into the real world, a person who obviously wasn't there. But when he turned, Akane found why nothing touched him: it was his sheer force of raw power.  
  
Her knees grew weak, and her heart started to beat faster and faster. Her stomach grew butterflies, which tried to launch themselves from her ears, and she could feel the pulse of a vein somewhere up one of her nostrils, threatening to blow copious amounts of blood everywhere in a gory spray.  
  
Then he smiled, and her body stopped reacting. This guy was an even worse pervert than Ranma! And not only that, but he had a shark's smile. A method of measuring someone up visually, determining how tasty one would be, and then making best use of them. He saw a person as a tool to be used, not as people to be treated with respect, dignity, loyalty. Something in Akane clicked. He was much, much worse than Ranma, simply because as perverted as that idiot was, Ranma did have respect for others, he didn't like making people feel unwanted, or stupid (unless, like Kuno, they really asked nicely for it), and Akane had to admit, Ranma was loyal. All the times she had thought he hadn't been loyal to her, had usually been a misunderstanding. Usually.  
  
He was only human, after all, and not some kind of god.  
  
"We each have our champions, do we not?" the blond man asked Akane.  
  
She got the feeling he wasn't expecting an answer, or rather, was expecting a demand for clarification on his meaning. But she got the idea. This man was the master of the girl fighting Ranma, Hotaru... Hotaru... they'd been introduced. Hotaru Tomoe? But she didn't look like the sickly, pale child she'd met when she'd visited the Ai Sou. No, she looked sexier, more dynamic, stronger. Had this person altered her to fit his needs? Maybe. Anger seethed inside her. Ranma deserved what he got.  
  
******  
  
Another punch smashed a wall to slivers, most of which bounced off Ranma's hardened skin.  
  
But not all. Several small slivers found their way into his eyes, which watered uncontrollably. As a consequence, he missed the incoming punch that smashed into his stomach and lower ribs - he felt one of those snap in three places and he cried out in pain as the jackhammer thrust him back through a pair of walls, and into a staff room.  
  
Teachers who had been in hiding, relatively safe until now, screamed in shock as a young girl flew back-first into the tea urn on the wall. Hot water exploded everywhere, and the girl screamed, piercingly. There was a smell of lightly scalded flesh, a raw smell that one or two of the teachers had been accustomed to with their tea-drinking habits, albeit on a much smaller scale. The girl stood up painfully, shirt torn and in tatters hanging off her shoulders. As she stood, those who watched were amazed to see a transformation take place in the girl's body as generous breasts sucked inwards, arms and thighs muscled up, the bone structure of the face shifted with an almost painful grinding sound, her soaking wet pants, already clinging to her skin, swelled around a growing bulge in her pants. And then her, rather, his hair colour darkened from red to a deep midnight black.  
  
Fingers curled up painfully in red tones, as Ranma forced his fingers into a fist. He felt like an overripe fruit, thanks to the boiling water. Not merely hot, but boiling hot. He was burnt, he was hurt from the fight - physically injured, actually, something he could proudly say didn't happen often - winded, and seeing double. Wait, triple, he decided as he realised there were three images of the Home Ec teacher peering over a couch at him.  
  
Through the hole in the wall he'd made, Hotaru approached. Mistress Saturn, Ranma forced himself to think of her. He had to think that. He was fighting for his life here - but not just his own. Also that of Hotaru's. And the other senshi. And the students of this school, and its teachers. The people in the streets beyond, beyond Tokyo, beyond Japan. He was fighting for people globally.  
  
He didn't want to find out if all the senshi assembled in one place could take down Mistress Saturn - heck, that ditzy Sailor Moon would likely wanna ask her to be friends, and that hadn't gotten Ranma anywhere - and he was quite sure that even if all the assembled senshi *could* bring Mistress Saturn down, Mistress Saturn and this... Yoshihiro, neither would allow the senshi to fight as one force. So it fell to Ranma. Here, now.  
  
At least he had his male body back now, soaked as he was. The transformation after so long had been painful, made even more painful by the injuries he'd suffered in the meantime. But his male body was much more resiliant. Much stronger. But that tradeoff came at the cost of a few milliseconds of speed. Something that would count dearly today.  
  
"Ah," MIstress Saturn said, stepping through the hole. "I see you're ready for me to ravish you now?" she asked, brightly.  
  
Ranma shook his head.  
  
"Oh, so sad, so sorry... but I'm going to anyway." Saturn took another step forward, bringing a hand up. It crackled with power.  
  
******  
  
Usagi poked her head back into the lounge. "Where did you say you saw my lunch, Rei?" she asked again, louder this time.  
  
But Rei was standing motionless, in a trance, in the middle of the lounge. Her mouth moved, and her voice was quiet, raspy, as if coming from somewhere else. Her eyes had glazed over. Usagi waved her hand in front of them, to no avail.  
  
And then she heard Rei's words.  
  
"savemeranmahelpmeranmaineedyouineedyoutohelpme" she said, in the low monotone that gushed forth.  
  
"What?" Usagi asked.  
  
"bestrongdontcrysavemehelpmehearmeineedhelpranma" Rei continued.  
  
Usagi waved her hands back and forth some more. "Earth to Rei! Earth to Rei! Are you tripping out on me?"  
  
"ranmagrabmestopmehelpmememeineedyouranmaonlyyou"  
  
"Will you get off him already? Hotaru's his girlfriend," Usagi snorted. "And he's so not cuter than Mamo-chan."  
  
"ranmaineedyouranmagrabmeholdmemakemeyoursagain" More from Rei.  
  
Usagi sighed, gave up, rolled her eyes heavenward. "And you so need to stop masterbating over him late at night."  
  
Rei snapped back to herself as Usagi spoke. She glared daggers at the blond, then turned and hurried from the room, yelling, "Ranma needs help!"  
  
Usagi followed Rei outside, where the other senshi were assembled, waiting for Usagi to rgab her lunch and return. They were looking at Rei's retreating form as she sprinted for the stairs, yelling back, "Hotaru's gone evil! She's attacking Ranma!"  
  
The others didn't hesitate. They dropped their bags, and ran for the stairs, henshin wands being pulled from pockets as they went. All apart from Usagi.  
  
"I just wish we could all go back to chasing after Tuxedo Kamen again, like we did in the old days," she grumbled, before transforming and following the others.  
  
******  
  
Mistress Saturn leapt forward, believing Ranma's injuries to be too great. But she should have remembered, Ranma didn't give up that easily, at least, not since he'd been fighting with the senshi. Not since there was a woman in his life who enjoyed fighting alongside him, someone better than him whom he had to strive to match on her lowest level of power. Someone who gave him the will to not run, to try and hold out, even if it was only until someone had a free hand to help save him.  
  
It was nice being saved sometimes.  
  
But this time, there was no last second save, no reserves of energy he could call on for the one final blow to put Mistress Saturn down long enough to change her mind again, no way out except fighting as he had been. And then running. Try to get Mistress Saturn to a place where there were fewer people around, where she could brawl it out with him all she wanted, until he could bring her around. Surely, her feelings for him wouldn't allow her to kill him, now, would they?  
  
She leapt, faster than most people's eyes could see. But Ranma was faster, even in his male body. He dodged to one side, injured rib howling in protest and agony, and brought a ki-enhanced roundhouse through from behind and snapped it into the base of Mistress Saturn's skull. She flopped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.  
  
And perhaps, for the moment, they were.  
  
Ranma didn't stick around to see how long it'd take for her to recover from that hit. Not long, if the way her eyelashes were quivering was any indication. His hardest blow, capable of perhaps levelling a small building - the concussion wave from the connection had momentarily deafened Ranma, as well as blown out the few remaining windows in the main school building - had at best knocked her unconscious for a few moments. Moments which he used to the best of his advantage.  
  
Ranma grabbed the remaining teachers, and leaped from one of the holes in the walls, landing in the courtyard of the school before making sure the teachers didn't hit the ground too hard. His rib howled again, he gritted his teeth against the pain as he stood.  
  
Facing Yoshihiro.  
  
The taller man applauded slowly, a smile creasing his face. "Very good, Mister Saotome. Very well done, indeed."  
  
"I'm not going to fight you."  
  
"I know you're not. You're a smart fighter. You know when you're outclassed."  
  
"I don't know what you did to her, but it won't last."  
  
"Perhaps not," Yoshihiro conceeded. "But it'll last long enough to suit my purposes."  
  
"Did you...?" Ranma couldn't bring himself to say it.  
  
"Did I? Or did I not?" Yoshihiro's tone was slightly mocking. "She's a young girl, Mister Saotome. She has needs. Wants. And you're so totally unaware of them. Can you fulfill her? Can you make her dreams come true? Can you do what she's aching for? Be the man she's lusting for?" The blond man shook his head. "No. At the moment, you can't."  
  
At this point, Ranma noticed Akane - well, noticed Akane in the sense that he finally let himself relax around Yoshihiro, convinced the Dark General would not yet attack him out of hand. He stared. "Did he -"  
  
Akane shook her head. "Why would you care if he did, though?" she asked, bitterly, rhetorically.  
  
"Akane, you'll always be my friend," he returned, feeling that the sentence described his emotions towards Akane so lamely, he was surprised she didn't immediately try to hit him. But the tears were worse than that. Akane wasn't good at holding them back, not the angry-sad tears she gave when upset. "Whether you can still believe that after I left you, I don't know. But I can tell you -"  
  
From the school building behind them, there was a scream like fingernails on a chalkboard. Mistress Saturn had awoken, very much on the not-happy side of things. Ranma turned to look at the school, then back to Akane, pain in his eyes. "- that I don't have time to tell you now. I will, though, I promise."  
  
Then, with a final glare at Yoshihiro, he leapt from the courtyard, and fled the scene.  
  
A few moments later, Mistress Saturn dropped heavily from the air to the ground beside Yoshihiro. "Do you want me to go after him right now?" she asked, panting a little. She leaned her head to the right until her spine cracked, then glared at Ranma's fast-retreating form.  
  
"No," Yoshihiro sighed. "For the moment, he's a fun diversion. Let him go. You'll get to play with him again, soon." He turned to Akane, and tipped an imaginery hat. "It was nice talking to you, Miss Tendo. I hope we meet again one day. But alas, you won't remember me if we do." With that, he passed a hand over Akane's face, and she toppled to the ground like a log. He looked towards the direction Ranma had disappeared in, and sighed. "Yes, fun indeed..."  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:   
  
Waaai! Another fic went by without a title. Chapter 6 shold have been titled "RUDE ENDINGS" but hey, I got a title for this one!  
  
A few problems during the writing of this fic. Two loved pets dying within a week seemed to put a crimp into my writing ability, sapping everything. Not writer's block, I had the ideas, I just couldn't write when I sat down to do it. Which sucked dramatically, since I've got an original anime-styled series to start getting notes down for. Waah. But my art has been going fine, no problems there much, so I'd been continuing on with that. (also for the first two weeks of term, I was working 3 days a week, and on average, gone from the house another two days during each week and online nowhere near as much, so that prolly had something to do with my lack of writing ability, too)  
  
So, what's coming next chapter? Well, hard to say. This part of the arc is gonna be a two-three chapter thing. So this is more a what to expect in the next few parts rather than necessarily just the next chapter. There's a new senshi made (oh, someone will DIE, says Ranma in his micro-mini). The cats return! They've been gone too long, being housetrained. And to all the people who think Hotaru betrayed Ranma... look closely at this chapter. It answers it all for you as to why they're still together at the end of this arc :) (Man, this is *so* like a Mr Squiggle episode... upside down, everyone!)  
  
Bye 'til next time! 


	8. Love 8

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 8  
  
** What Would Ranma Saotome Do? **  
  
  
"Hotaru," breathed Ranma, "Come on, you can do it!"  
  
Mistress Saturn struggled, visibly, the goodness and light within breaking free from the shackles that had bound her core of being, returning once more to the surface. The darkened fuku lightened again, into the familiar royal purple of Sailor Saturn, the woman Ranma Saotome knew well. The rest of the costume stretched back into its normal cut and positionings, and Saturn shook her head. "What...?" she asked slowly. "What happened?"  
  
"Yoshihiro had you enslaved," Ranma said, leaning forward to comfort the younger woman. "He took you over, made you do bad things." Over Ranma's shoulder, Saturn could see the bad things. She could also see Tatewaki Kuno, standing off to one side, eyes bowed in tandem with his bokken, standing in silent salute to his goddess. "But it's all over now, you're better now."  
  
Saturn's eyes moved, taking in the damage and devastation. "I did this?"  
  
"That's of no importance. You didn't hurt anyone. He made you do it. It's his fault."  
  
Saturn's eyes grew large and round, as she remembered the things she had done, the atrocities committed by her hand, in her name.  
  
No.  
  
In *his* name. By *his* hand. Ranma was right. Ranma was always right. She pulled free of Ranma's embrace, turned to face Yoshihiro, fire burning in her eyes. "This time, you die," she growled, feet sinking into the concrete as she powered up her ki aura. Ranma stepped back, happy to see his most favoured pupil had learnt all he could teach. She was stronger, no, maybe just as strong, no... just a little less stronger than him.  
  
He had to be the stronger one, else he couldn't help her from Yoshihiro.  
  
Wait. *Was* the stronger one, because he'd saved her from Yoshihiro.  
  
No. Dammit, that didn't work either. Ranma sighed, slapped the top of a concrete wall in frustration as he leapt past. Fantasy life was all well and good, but unless he could figure out that all important *how to SAVE Hotaru*, there wasn't much good in thinking past that point.  
  
Another fence came up, and his toes barely touched it, ki blsting out through his feet to propel him once more into the skies once more. Furinken High School was in the distance now, far, far in the distance. The devastation away from him. He had known Hotaru was strong, heck, he'd felt the pulled punches in training, and SEEN the punches that could pulverise reinforced concrete when in combat. And he'd known that, even then, she was holding back.  
  
For Sailor Saturn had the power to level planets, something that put Ranma right out of her weight class, as it were.  
  
So, how was he to 'bring her back'? He couldn't beat Yoshihiro's influence out of her, if anything that'd strengthen it. But likewise, he couldn't expect to face her, try to turn her, without it getting physical. Damn. That made things difficult. Because, while Ranma was dodging punches, kicks and seemingly-magical attacks, he'd also have to be changing her mind. And while taunts were easy to produce, the level of conversation Ranma suspected would be needed to bring her around, to get her to throw off the dark cloud holding her in thrall herself, could very well be beyond him as he nursed various broken bones and missing limbs.  
  
An evil Saturn was a Saturn unbound by moral strictures.  
  
Not good, in other words.  
  
Suddenly, he stopped his bouncing. The feeling he associated with Yoshihiro while in his male body, a shivering hatred that crawled up the back of his spine into his skull, had vanished. So had the currently-blackened star he associated with Hotaru. Both had gone... somewhere else.  
  
He turned to face Furinken. Nothing. Not so much as a murmur of either feeling. He could rest. But what could he do now? He flexed a hand, clenched it into a fist. Pain rippled up it, a sensation similar to dipping his hand into a jar of needles. It didn't seem to be damaged, he surmised on inspection, and decided that he was coming down off his adrenyline high, and the pain of transformation while still a little weakened and after so long was now surfacing.  
  
Where could he go to calm down, to relax, to meditate, until the pain was gone? He couldn't get far. And yet, this was Nerima. Unless he wanted some serious problems in the immediate future, Ranma had to move on. He tensed his legs to leap upwards again, but pain wracked them, and he doubled up, eventually falling off the fence he'd stopped on. Thankfully, he didn't fall into the stream on the other side of the fence, but instead onto the soft grass of a small garden on the side of a pathway. Ranma curled into a small foetal ball, tried to focus beyond the pain, and found he couldn't.  
  
So he did the next best thing, and passed out.  
  
******  
  
Sailor Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Nemesis gazed at the ruined school building. Students, dazed, were already starting to wander around. They seemed to be used to destruction, but this time, something was so seriously wrong, that they weren't sure how to react. Shellshocked was the word Mercury had used. Sailor Moon believed it. Mercury had said something about punches and kicks breaking the sound barrier, and the compression waves in the atmosphere from them having the same effect on the students as the blast wave of compressed air from a bomb burst had on soliders. Sailor Moon believed that, too, even if she thought Mercury was being overly simplistic in having to describe the same phenomenon twice. Sailor Moon thought Mercury was a little shocked herself.  
  
And she had to admit, she was, as well.  
  
The school's front building was ruined. Not levelled to the ground, but the holes smashed through entire sections, flooring destroyed on most floors, support columns smashed beyond repair, and the foundations shifting under the concussive onslaught they'd been forced to endure. The building was a waste. It would have to be torn down anyway.  
  
And still the students wandered.  
  
One walked up to them, a wooden bokken held at his side. "Verily, it seems my day for the fortuitous arrival of goddesses," he said, in a noble-sounding voice. Slightly superior, yet offering his inferiority to those before him. He bowed his head, spoke with his eyes lowered to Sailor Moon. "Speak, order me that I might do your will."  
  
Sailor Moon glanced at Mercury, who was still staring through her computer's visor at the ruined building, then back to the young man before her. She guessed he was attractive in a way, traditionally so more than anything else. And his shoulders... reminded her of Mamoru. Big. Square. Solid. Shoulders for holding on to in the depths of night.  
  
Uh... back on the job, she chided herself. Out loud, she asked, "Do you know who did this?" knowing who had, but needing to find out for certain. Confirmation would hurt, knowing that once more, Saturn was corrupted. But Rei had already told them such, and this was a mere formality.  
  
Yet, a formality that had to be observed.  
  
"Yes, my lady, it was the goddess Saturn, she of the raven hair and the short skirts." Sailor Moon noticed him eyeing the hem of her skirt, as well, and shifted position slightly so as to hide as much of herself as she could. Which was difficult, but possible, if one was imaginative.  
  
"That sounds like her," she said, turning to Mercury.  
  
"Was it the name 'Saturn' that was the dead-giveaway for you, Sailor Moon?" Mars asked, sarcastically.  
  
"Hey! We've got a problem here that includes one of the senshi and our dorm's manager!" Sailor Moon growled. "You think maybe we can keep the bitchy comments out of it for once? Just once? Hmm?" Mars shrank back a little, deciding that now wasn't the time to needle Sailor Moon. Truth be told, she felt a little unsure of the situation and of herself as well. She'd felt the enemy's influence inside Saturn, the dark tendrils of power twisted around the core of her being. The scared little girl, calling for help, at the centre of it all.  
  
"Mercury!" Sailor Moon called, gaining the senshi's attention. Mercury retracted her visor as she turned to face her leader. "Is there anything you can tell us from this? What turned her? Is Ranma still here?"  
  
"You know that scoundrel, Ranma Saotome?" the man asked, with a little disgust in his voice. "I, Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Furinken High, shall tell you of the vile deeds he has done before being co-opted by my goddess -" his voice cut off as Sailor Moon's hand slapped across his mouth. She gave him a dirty look before turning back to Mercury.  
  
"Sailor Mercury?"  
  
Mercury shook her head. "As far as I'm aware, neither is here. There aren't any bodies... Ranma must have done his best to contain her. I can't find any bodies."  
  
Jupiter whistled in appreciation. "Well, he can fight, we know that now."  
  
Mars nodded once in agreement. "And he survived against a pissed-off senshi. He's gonna get higher marks in my book. I'm definitely listening to him more in training."  
  
Nemesis was staring at a point on the ground, in front of the building. She'd been staring at someone lying there for some time, hadn't offered anything to the conversation. Then she left the group, headed over towards the person.  
  
"Who is it?" Mars asked.  
  
"I think... it's Ranma's ex-fiance," Nemesis replied, bending and scooping up the unconscious young woman. She raised her voice as she stood up. "Can someone tell me where this girl lives?"  
  
******  
  
Cologne had felt the micro-airbursts from the concussive blasts inside her restaurant. A fight. She had paused, considering. A serious fight, she decided. Very serious, the way a whole shelf of plates had jumped to the ground after a particularly large one shook the Nekohanten. Mousse turned to face the direction of the school also.  
  
"What was that?" he asked rhetorically, knowing full-well what it was. What he meant was more along the lines of 'who IS that?"  
  
Shampoo poked her head through the interior door. "Aiya! Great-greanmother!"  
  
"Yes, child," Cologne mused quietly, "I feel him, too."  
  
"Feel who?" Mousse asked, lost. Then he adjusted his glasses as realisation hit him. "Oh. Ranma?"  
  
"And someone else. Someone strong."  
  
"Girl who save me," Shampoo muttered from the doorway.  
  
"Interesting," Cologne said, almost to herself. "Son-in-law is doing well, too." Another powerful crump rattled cups. There was a pause, and then nothing. Silence. The energy flows Cologne had been sensing drained away, and Ranma's presence departed the school. "Very interesting. Shampoo, Mousse, I think it time we pay the Tendo's a visit..."  
  
"Why we go to angry girl's house?"  
  
"It's time, Shampoo. Son-in-law is weakened, and hurt. The enemies of the tribe will be out to avenge him. Our time has come, for revenge."  
  
"Revenge?" Mousse asked, pushing his glasse back up his nose. "For what? I've never heard of anything like you've described these women to be before."  
  
Cologne gave the nearly-blind man a withering glare. "You are not privvy to every morsel of history of the tribe, Mousse. I suggest you remember that, and do as I say."  
  
******  
  
The senshi weren't the only people to leave the Ai Sou to investigate the happenings in Nerima. Two cats, one white, one black, stood over Ranma's unconscious form. Luna turned to Artemis. "Should we wake him?" she asked, quietly.  
  
Artemis considered. "Let him sleep. Whether Sailor Saturn hurt him or not is beside the point. He's had a massive shock to his system, both emotional and with this physical change again after so long... I suggest we let him rest a while longer."  
  
Luna nodded slowly, in agreement. But there had to be something they could do to even up the score for Ranma, to let him actually stand a chance against a rabid senshi. As Artemis padded off, Luna came to a decision, and ran through a series of mental calculations before attempting a small backflip. At the apex of her flight, a small interdimensional vortex opened, and a henshin wand dropped from it into Ranma's hand. "Rest easy, Sailor Ceres," she whispered in Ranma's ear before following her partner.  
  
******  
  
Soun Tendo answered the knocking on the front gate with a scowl. A critical moment in the shogi game, and he just KNEW his playing opposition was going to somehow be winning when he returned. He'd often suspected Genma Saotome of cheating, yet Soun had never caught him at it, and just as often decided he'd forgotten what moves had been played recently, that he hadn't been paying enough attention. Yet this time, this time, he had Genma. He had him dead. It was Soun's turn to win.  
  
So he opened the gate, and a young woman, tall, in a black short skirt, and a white sleeveless top with a black bow, strode past him and into the house. the clothing looked like an abbrivated school uniform, Soun thought idly to himself, but not a local one. While his mind was processing satorial information about the intruder, the rest of him caught up to the fact there were another five girls trailing after her. A blond one stopped next to him, gave a cheery smile, and said, "Relax. We're the Bishoujo Sailor Senshi, and we're just returning your daughter." Then she too disappeared into the house.  
  
"Are you friends of Akane's?" he called out, but to no avail. The girls were gone. He shrugged, decided whatever it was didn't concern him, and shut the gate before walking back to the game board.  
  
A quick study of the board followed. And silence.  
  
Damn. What was he thinking with those moves? He'd just given the game away to Genma.  
  
******  
  
Nabiki threw open the door to Akane's bedroom, and with the force she used, it rebounded off the end of its track, bouncing back into her. Trying not to succumb to embarrassment and trying to project an image of anger, she snarled, "What are you doing with my little sister?"  
  
One of the shorter girls, with a blue colour scheme, looked up from beside Akane. "I assure you, your sister is safe. We wee just getting her home safely."  
  
"Safely? One of you bitches just tried to KILL us all!"  
  
The women exchanged glances. Then one of the two blond women stepped forward. "Hey, it wasn't her fault. She's been possessed by a dark force from an alternate dimension!"  
  
"Great going, Sailor Moon," the raven-haired women muttered, "Now she'll think we're CRAZY flirts."  
  
But Nabiki paused. "I've heard worse stories," she admitted. She seemed to accept the version the blond with the dumplings stuck on her head had put forward with little more than a nod and she moved up beside Akane, and checked her out. "What's wrong with her? I didn't see her get hit."  
  
"Do you know what happened at the school?" the woman in the blue skirt asked.  
  
The one in black grunted. "There was a fight. She got knocked silly by the shockwaves of those punches."  
  
Nabiki shook her head. "No, Akane's stronger than that. I bet it was that guy who had been playing with Hotaru's head this morning..." her voice drifted off as she calculated various methods of gaining revenge for injuring her little sister, none of them pleasant - none of them physical, and all of them financial.  
  
"He... uh, what did he do to her?" Dumpling Head asked again.  
  
Nabiki shook her head. "I don't know. They were talking while Ranma and that other girl were fighting, and then I lost track of the guy, and of Akane. When I saw her, you women were standing over her. But you grabbed her and took off before I could get to you."  
  
"We moved faster than you could have followed," the one in the red skirt said. "So how did you know where we went? And how did you get back here so fast?"  
  
"Kuno-baby told me where you were headed. I took a shortcut." Nabiki shrugged.  
  
"Was it just talking?" the one in blue queried, a concerned look on her face.  
  
Nabiki shrugged again, her attention focussed on her sister. She knealt down beside Akane, stroked her face. Akane's features stirred under the light sensations across her face. "I don't know," she repeated, eventually. "But Hotaru... she wasn't the kind of girl to exactly fly off like this. Cruel and calculating, perhaps, if she's been spying on us for this long, and her words were calculated to do the most damage they could to Ranma... heck, even I could see that... but..." Nabiki shook her head.  
  
"Oh my," someone said from the doorway. As one, the senshi turned, beheld yet another of the Tendo sisters. This one was older; Kasumi. "What happened to Akane?"  
  
Something about her made Mercury's spine shiver in apprehension, but she couldn't find anything visually about the older woman that screamed BAD PERSON at her. Almost unbidden, her visor dropped over her eyes, but again, while it gave off warning indications, it couldn't pinpoint anything in particular. It flipped back upwards into her tiara, and seeing as the other senshi appeared to have the same apprehensions as she had, she spoke for the group. "A... friend of ours, under the control of some master mental manipulator, attacked Ranma Saotome at the local high school. We're not sure what's wrong with Akane. I suspect she's just sleeping. She should wake any time."  
  
Mercury's words were prophetic, for Akane stirred, moving her arms and legs, then opening her eyes. "What happened?" she asked.  
  
"No one really knows, Akane," Nabiki said from her side. "I saw you talking to the guy who twisted Hotaru's head around, and then he was gone and you were unconscious. Did he... hit you or anything?" Akane shook her head.  
  
"Maybe he hypnotised you?" the girl with the dumplings-styled hair said brightly. "You know, that happens an awful lot. Or these bad guys have bright, beautiful young girls fall in love with them..." Her voice trailed off as she realised everyone, including the happy-happy sister standing in the doorway, was staring at her in disbelief. "What? It happened to a friend of mine, okay?" She blushed and turned away.  
  
Kasumi stepped back from the doorway, and the dark aura seeped back from Mercury; perhaps she'd been imagining things? Because, after all, no one could be that calm and happy and relaxed upon finding a bunch of strange women in her little sister's bed, with her little sister stretched out, cold, on her futon. She gave a smile, tilting her head. "It's good to see you're okay, Akane," she said, earnestly. "I'll go get some refreshments for our friends." She smiled again, and was gone, walking down the stairs towards the kitchen.  
  
"Do you remember anything about the man you were talking to?" Mercury asked the tired young woman.  
  
Akane stared up at Mercury, confusion in her eyes. "I was talking to a man?" Her face and mind were a total blank.  
  
******  
  
Ranma stirred, finally. The pain had receded eventually, and now, it only hurt occasionally when he moved. Which he wasn't doing a lot of. conscious thought took a little while to make sense, and thus he was thinking very, very slowly. What would he do? What was his next move?  
  
There was a weight on his chest. It hurt his damaged rib, which was knitting as rapidly as his more serious injuries seemed to. Something cool, something hard. A hand reached up, clasped the small object. It warmed instantly at his touch, this object, about the size of a pen. Seemed to be some kind of metal, but it was responding to him. He raised it up to the point where he could see it clearly.  
  
One of the little transformation wands the senshi had. He'd seen Hotaru's often enough to know what one of those things were. But he hadn't seen the design on it before...  
  
Oh dear. He had a bad thought. This... wasn't his, was it? Oh Kami, it was... The thought embarrassed him.  
  
Yet, it would give him a better chance at holding Hotaru... Mistress Saturn... at bay while he tried to break through whatever mental whammy Yoshihiro had placed on her. It would give him an advantage, too, as she wouldn't be expecting another... what? Magical girl? Like a female form given by a cursed spring wasn't magical enough? He snorted.  
  
A closer squint at the wand showed the word 'Ceres' etched into the symbol affixed to the end. Weird. Did this mean he was going to have to wave the wand and yell out one of those embarrassing transformation activation phrases the magical girls did on television? And then suffer an even more embarrassing transformation sequence in which he'd likely be naked in front of a whole lot of people?  
  
Possibly.  
  
But at least he could make it a little less embarrassing. Now, about this time, Ranma knew, there was a certain woman who would be doing her washing...  
  
******  
  
"Now?"  
  
Even to the lowest of the surviving Youma in Yoshihiro's pocket dimension, Mistress Saturn sounded to be whining. She'd been at him since they'd returned, Saturn seeming to walk with a little limp that had repaired itself within minutes, and a slightly torn uniform that had been the interest of many of the shorter creatures in the main thronechamber.  
  
Yoshihiro sat, eyes closed, face perfectly composed. Mistress Saturn couldn't tell what was going on inside of him... but she knew what she wanted. She knew this man. Or rather, he knew her. Knew her in ways Ranma could never hope to know her. All the items she'd glossed over or just not told Ranma about when she'd been Hotaru... every hope, every dream... every fear.  
  
The little girl who'd cowered from lightning had been pulled screaming into the darkness under the bed by the scaly hands of a monster the likes she'd never hoped to see. And Mistress Saturn knew, that little girl was still inside, not fighting, but only because she thought she was powerless. Yoshihiro's hold over her was... well, dependant on this young one's fear, her shame, of another knowing her perfectly. Of having peered into her soul.  
  
That had made it easier for the subtle magics to work on her, that had locked her personality up, let her urges take control, the darker impulses that hid witin even the most purest of hearts. All he had needed was an opening. All he had needed... was her attention.  
  
Yoshihiro was a master manipulator, and growing to be a master stratigian as well. Umiko stood to his right, slightly behind the throne, with a slight smirk on her face. If anyone questioned it, it was gone. But to those who kept a wary eye on her, she who was already becoming known as She Who Had Removed The Popular One, she looked assured of her position, of her place.  
  
The mother of the Master had its perks.  
  
But Saturn cared for none of this. "Please! You said another time! You said soon! I could play with him again soon!"  
  
Yoshihiro didn't show it, but he was considering. It didn't suit his plans to have the young martial artist removed quite so permanently from the picture yet... and the longer Mistress Saturn waited, the longer she was forced to bide her time, the more likely she'd do serious injury to Ranma. And yet, allowing her to go now, while he likely hadn't recovered, she could very easily forget when to stop playing with him and kill him by accident.  
  
But then, he considered, Ranma's ki levels were rising once more. His life force was beginning to pump ever stronger, and even in the few days he had been observing Ranma in his female form, Yoshihiro had been surprised at the rpgress the martial artist had made in recovering his strength. Even at the end of the fight with Mistress Saturn, Ranma had been recovering, scratches and grazes pulling tight and closed, bruises fading, even what Yoshihiro suspected was a broken rib appearing to give him less and less trouble as he talked before leaping away over the school fence and disappearing.  
  
However, there was also the chance that this powerful new toy he'd acquired would revert to her previous personality. He'd found she'd been possessed before, not by someone quite as skilled as him, but by someone slightly more powerful. For the moment, at least, he allowed. She'd set up defences, knew how to fight it, could make his creation pause at a critical moment - if only she'd stop crying and wailing for help; Yoshihiro could hear her in his mind, through the link he shared with all his children.  
  
Ultimately, though, she had an itch. And it needed scratching. He nodded at Mistress Saturn. "Go. Don't kill him. Return when you are done."  
  
Saturn flashed him a savage grin, twisted and vanished from the dimension.  
  
******  
  
"It is always nice to see you, Cologne, but why are you here?"  
  
"Soun Tendo, you know as well as I do you are hiding guests from me. I merely wish to give them my welcome." Cologne shifted on her walking stick, giving an air of openness, and indifference. Shampoo and Mousse stood behind her in flanking positions, neither looking like they were ready to fight, but Soun knew that both were extremely competant fighters, and were quite capable of dealing with him, even from a standing start. Not that he consciously thought of that.  
  
Yet he wasn't going to give anything away.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Soun said, stalling, wondering who the girls who had brought Akane home were. Wondering if they knew they'd somehow made a powerful enemy. Cologne didn't just come over for nothing, especially when Ranma wasn't around. Did this have something to do with him? Soun didn't know. He was aware of Nabiki peeking from Akane's window upstairs, then her face vanished. "My daughter Akane is inside, though, and she has some friends over. Perhaps you mean them? Would you like to meet them?"  
  
Cologne nodded.  
  
******  
  
"Do you guys know her?" Nabiki asked quietly, careful so her voice didn't carry beyond the room. The three Amazons downstairs were reknowned for above average hearing.  
  
The woman who'd introduced herself as Sailor Nemesis looked contrite. "I nearly killed her daughter," she mumbled.  
  
Nabiki stared. Then remembered Cologne's story of the evil women Ranma lived with. "You're... the girls from the dormitory?" she asked, confused, as the knowledge linked itself together in her brain unwillingly and she compared the senshi to the girls she'd so briefly seen. "All of you? Well, I guess Hotaru is..." she muttered to herself.  
  
The senshi looked at one another uncomfortably. They hadn't known Nabiki for long, but they already knew something of her wont for exploiting people via blackmail to make money... would this be used against them at any time? Akane broke the silence. "Well, if you're like that Hotaru girl Nabiki knows, I guess you're all magical girls, too." She mentally chidded herself for being so obvious. "What I mean is, you've all got... non-magical forms? You might be able to hide that way."  
  
"Why?" asked Sailor Moon, herself a little confused.  
  
"Because the woman coming up the stairs now doesn't exactly like you," Nabiki explained.  
  
That was an argument the senshi didn't exactly like. However, there was still the problem of transforming in public. Most didn't like transforming within Ranma's sight, and he had known for a lot longer just who most of the senshi were. But Nemesis shrugged, not wanting to hurt the young woman Ranma called Shampoo again, and let her alter ego slip from her like a cloak. The others followed suit.  
  
There was a light tap at the door. "Akane?" Soun asked, quietly.  
  
The door slid open at a tap from Cologne's cane. She peered into the room suspiciously, saw Akane propped up on an elbow on her futon, Nabiki sitting next to her with a hand on her shoulder. And on the floor around the futon were a number of girls, about Shampoo's age. Cologne glared, but recovered from her surprise; she'd been expecting much more powerful people, not mere children. "Greetings," she croaked.  
  
Further conversation was halted by the sound of air rushing inwards, smashing together at supra-aural velocities. Half the roof above Akane's room was smashed, ripped upwards by the sudden creation of vacuum, revealing a hovering patch of darkness. It was two dimensional, more like a painting than a doorway, yet Mistress Saturn stepped through it, landed lightly on the rim of the wall surrounding Akane's room, and smiled cruelly in towards the assembled people.  
  
"I see my beloved isn't here yet," she sighed theatrically, "so I guess I'll have to take my frustrations out on you."  
  
The senshi leaped to their feet, yet didn't transform; they waited for Sailor Moon to give the signal. Kasumi tensed, too, but then relaxed. "Oh, hello Ranma," she said, cheerfully.  
  
Everyone turned to look past Saturn, out through Akane's window into the yard.  
  
On the fence opposite stood Ranma, in his female form once more. He looked angry, hands bunched in fists. One held something that none could make out.  
  
"That's one step too far, Hotaru," he said in a quiet tone, yet it carried across the yard perfectly. Everyone else stayed silent.  
  
"Oh? Is it, ex?" she sneered. "I mean, you couldn't stop me before, not properly, what makes you think you can stop me now?"  
  
"This." Ranma held up the henshin wand clasped in his fist.  
  
"Hmph," Saturn sniffed. "They were just to get your attention anyway. I didn't really want to hurt them. Nothing's as good as hurting you, beloved."  
  
Ranma twirled the wand in his fingers, then grabbed it tight, held it high. "Ceres dirty great big rock - make up!" he yelled, saying the first thing that came into his mind. Thankfully, someone above had taken note of the fact Ranma had no idea what he was doing with the wand, and it activated, the transformation sweeping through him, reassembling his clothing into the standard senshi fuku design, coloured in greys. Mistress Saturn gave him an unappreciative glance and made an unimpressed noise deep in the back of her throat.  
  
"I guess we fight on even terms?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, the colours aren't really my thing - you should have gotten a yellow or something, I think - but hey, whatever works for you."  
  
Sailor Ceres smiled. Nabiki shivered; it didn't look that pleasant. It promised much destruction, much property damage. Idly, she wondered where her calculator was.  
  
"You think I need this to fight you?" Ceres said, raising the henshin wand. "I mean, do you think so little of my fighting skill, my unenhanced strength? My will? My character?" Ceres smirked. "I don't need no change wand or short skirt to kick your butt."  
  
And with that, Ceres raised the wand above his head, lifted his other hand to grasp the other end firmly. He paused.  
  
"NO!" shouted Sailor Moon.  
  
"No!" cried Luna from a nearby rooftop.  
  
And Ceres pulled down with both hands, pushing upwards with both thumbs simultaneously. The wand bent for a moment, then snapped under the unrelenting pressure. Ceres' fuku billowed outwards into dozens of grey streamers, then reassembled in Ranma's normal outfit of loose black pants and a red Chinese shirt.  
  
Nabiki was puzzled. "Ranma doesn't need to play dress-ups to beat her," she muttered.  
  
Ranma's hand pointed up at Mistress Saturn, who was now puzzled. "I don't need anyone else's help to beat you, Mistress Saturn! I am Ranma Saotome, your sensei, your boyfriend! I know you in ways that Yoshihiro could never know you, because you let me, and he forced his way into you. I will free you, and I don't need any help in doin' it!"  
  
Saturn made to say something, but Ranma's pointed finger and shout stopped her dead.  
  
"I am Ranma Saotome. And I am going to kick your ass."  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Whew... another chapter finished... yay! I won't say for sure, but I might have the next chapter finished in a week or two... don't wanna lose the momentum I got with setting up the cliffhanger for this chapter :)  
  
so, next time: Hotaru's back. How's this going to affect her? 


	9. Love 9

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
WARNING: There is some bad language used in this chapter. Note if you don't like four-letter words, or aren't allowed to read them, skip this chapter.  
  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 9  
  
** Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough **  
  
  
  
Saturn went to say something. Ranma knew what he had to do now. He'd worked out the script in his head.  
  
Well, the start of it. Basically, get his girlfriend... if that was what she was, still... angry enough to make mistakes. Then to get her down on the ground, make sure she was anchored safely to the ground, and try to bring her around once more. He knew this woman. Knew her as well as someone could without being her. Her ki had told him everything she hadn't, and she'd known. He knew when she was sad, when she was angry, when she was happy... when she was shy. The small nuances in her gestures and speech, he'd known from them, too. This Yoshihiro, who'd twisted her mind and body, hadn't gotten to know her like that.  
  
He'd had to have rammed his way in with his influence, pushed what made her interesting and unique to one side, stolen her mind and used what little bit of her that interested him: her power.  
  
That, and her attachment to Ranma himself. Ranma was beginning to feel that Yoshihiro was making this a personal vendetta between the two of them. Why, Ranma didn't know. At the moment, he didn't really care, either. His girlfriend stood before him, ready to speak, anxious to spout forth with whatever malicious bile she could generate to injure Ranma before he could make a move.  
  
That made him so really not interested in knowing why Yoshihiro was interested in him.  
  
So he pointed his finger, filling it with all the rage and pain he felt, willing his bones back into position, forcing his bruises to fade. He pointed at Mistress Saturn. He opened his mouth. Sucked in a breath.  
  
"I am Ranma Saotome. And I am going to kick your ass."  
  
Saturn stopped, momentarily stunned. Obviously, either she or Yoshihiro hadn't expected this. Most likely, Saturn had expected Ranma to plead once more for the return of his Hotaru-chan, innocent child that she was, and fall to his knees and beg that she be allowed to go free.  
  
But hey, Ranma encouraged anyone to have an active fantasy life. After all, that's the only way people like Kuno got dates, wasn't it?  
  
A foot stamped into the ground, and Ranma's blast of ki sank it into the hard dirt of the Tendo's, sending chunks of the stuff upwards as the energies pouring from Ranma's body momentarily altered the force of gravity around him. His other foot pushed backwards into the ground  
  
and then he was moving forward, a full-body amagurriken smashing into Saturn's unprepared defences. Ranma's full bodymass, smashing into her unprepared body at near supersonic speeds, created a huge force that not even a senshi could halt in its path. She pulled a fist down, to smash into his back  
  
but Ranma was gone again, and she barely stopped from thumping herself in the gut. Saturn growled, looked skywards to where Ranma floated, taunting her with a face. She pushed off from the ground herself, tucked her body up around her, twirling her Silence Glaive in her left hand while her right made to pull back for a punch.  
  
In the tenth of a second this had happened in, Ranma had dodged back to the ground, spinning around on his way and sending a heel into her stomach. She stopped her forward motion suddenly, eyes opened wide as she fought for breath. It wasn't long in coming, and she blinked from the sight of the Tendos watching again.  
  
There was a smash at one end of the yard as part of the wall was demolished, then a scant heartbeat later, the wall at the other end of the yard exploded. Soun raised a hand to ward off the projectiles spreading outwards from that explosion, before noting that he had half-a-dozen young women in sailor outfits around him again.  
  
"We've got to deflect these chunks from hitting anyone!" Sailor Moon yelled.  
  
Nemesis prepared to leave the Inner senshi to their work and join Ranma, but she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, and saw the hand was connected to Kasumi Tendo.  
  
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," Kasumi smiled. "Ranma knows what he's doing."  
  
"So do I," Nemesis countered.  
  
The air in the room chilled slightly as Kasumi frowned. "He has already paid off his debt to this family for abandoning my sister," she said quietly. "You won't be good for him."  
  
"I'm going to help my sensei," Nemesis said again, and made to shake off the elder Tendo sister's hand, but Kasumi wasn't shaken off that easily.  
  
"I said, you can't help him."  
  
"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Nemesis said, trying not to get angry, trying to ignore the voices coming through now. Most of them were tugging her outside, to the fight with Ranma, at any cost. At least one, though, was suggesting equally strongly that she remain here as Ranma was possibly in trouble from other sources as well. This other character people had reported at the school was troubling, and conspicuously absent. Would he turn up to threaten her... her sensei?  
  
That voice won out in the end. There may be threats other than Hotaru. And yet, in not helping Ranma fight Hotaru, that placed Mitsuki in a slightly worse position in the romantic stakes. Damned if she did, damned if she didn't. She decided to watch the fight and hate herselves.  
  
******  
  
A fist traded places with a foot traded places with a forehead traded places with a knee with a fist with a fist fist foot elbow double-fist at speeds faster than normal eyes could follow. Ranma didn't let up on Saturn, knowing if she got a punch in, he'd be that much slower. Two punches, he could be nursing broken ribs again. More than that, and he would be in serious danger.  
  
He was in his female form at the moment, and thus wasn't quite as strong as he would have liked. But there was no time to go looking for hot water to change back to his male form, and it wasn't like Ranma could just stop the fight and heat some up. No way was Saturn going to sit with him and drink lemonade while he waiting for a kettle to boil.  
  
Five minutes into the fight, and Ranma's concentration was still strong. His body was worsening slightly, though, as even Saturn's near-misses were bringing with them walls of wind strong enough to raise bruises. His punches and kicks, though, were beinging delivered faster than Saturn could move. For every near miss of hers, he connected more than two dozen times.  
  
Moving too fast for the eye to follow once more, Ranma brought a leg up in a very unladylike manoeuvre, and brought Saturn to her knees, a shocked look on her face.  
  
"Hey, works on girls, too," Ranma complimented himself. He noted to himself that the NEXT time he was set upon by a super-strong invulnerable woman, he'd knee them in the groin first up and save himself the injuries.  
  
A quick spin-kick brought his right heel in behind Saturn's head, and smashed into the base of her skull. She groaned, and thumped to the ground.  
  
******  
  
Over. It was over.  
  
Ranma had breathing space.  
  
Caught his breath. Stood upright, sucked in another deep breath as bruises caught up with him. He picked a few chunks of stone from his hair, rubbed the small amounts of blood seeping from microcuts along his jaw from his face with the sleeve of his shirt.  
  
And heard the stone chink behind him.  
  
"Oh, is that ALL?" saturn asked, pulling herself to her feet. She was bleeding in several places, bruised, fuku ripped and torn around the edges where near-misses and actual impacts at supersonic velocities had pulled the superstrong material in different directions faster than it was capable of withstanding. Her arms held just out from her body, she brought them upwards in semi-circles, passing each other over her stomach, and as they travelled, her injuries healed. Damn.  
  
Ranma couldn't do that. He couldn't match that healing ability of Hotaru's. He'd only been hoping somewhere in the most primal parts of his brain that believed in elements taken from religions he'd been exposed to throughout the years that she wouldn't have access to that power.  
  
Yet, he knew it was a weak hope. She had access to all of Saturn's other powers, presumably even the power to destroy the world.  
  
But Ranma was banking on the fact that Yoshihiro most likely had other needs for Earth, and he wouldn't allow the planet to be damaged.  
  
Well, much.  
  
Ranma, on the other hand, was only going to be safe so long as he provided some entertainment for Mistress Saturn. Which, considering the fact she just *had* to be playing with him, toying with him, possibly wouldn't be quite as long as he'd hoped.  
  
Whatever he was going to do, whatever rabbit he was going to pull from a hat, he had to do it fast.  
  
Thankfully, speed was something Ranma had gotten pretty good at using.  
  
******  
  
Mistress Saturn was still smirking when she realised the Ranma she was looking at was an afterimage. Her brain, operating at speeds faster than that of a normal human, detected his energy signature, moving incredibly fast at her. Her eyes hadn't yet caught up to his movement as she snapped a forearm up to block what would have been a devastating kick, and flipped Ranma back.  
  
His feet smashed into the yard's concrete wall, knees bent under the force, but somehow, rather than smashing through the wall and through the next block of houses, Ranma transferred the kinetic energy he'd been given from the blow into forward movement again, and with fists outstretched in front of him, Ranma blasted his ki forward of himself, creating a wall of sheer willpower about to hit her.  
  
Saturn spun, flicking a leg upwards as she did so, and made to block the energy with a snap-kick as she came around, but Ranma cancelled the wave at the last instant, her kick passing through nothing but air. Mistress Saturn overbalanced, her posture ready to absorb the force of the energy, and she started to fall - helped greatly when Ranma's speeding body smashed into her midriff.  
  
Air rushed from her lungs again, and she swore loudly, swinging a fist through the location Ranma's head had just been in.  
  
Her target no longer there, Saturn's fist continued its wild swing around, unbalancing her further. A knee crunched in the small of her back, and her eyes rolled back as she uttered a pained groan.  
  
Her opponent danced backwards, out of reach. She staggered into an upright position, murder in her eyes. The Silence Glaive swung into her hand, spun around in her fingers as easily as a cheerleader spins a baton. She could hear the minute sounds of air molecules being sliced in half.  
  
Giving Ranma no warning, she leapt at him, slicing the Glaive through where he had been mere microseconds earlier. His feet touched lightly on her head, bobbing it down. As she forced it up to try to unbalance her quarry, Ranma bounced higher. She jabbed the Glaive upwards, and Ranma, with nothing to bounce off to alter his direction, twisted in midair and emitted a burst of ki from his hands that enabled him to dodge just enough for the blade of the weapon to pass harmlessly through his clothing rather than his torso.  
  
Feet padded to the ground behind her, and Saturn turned, bringing the Glaive down low. Ranma ducked lower to have it pass overhead, missing an ear by less than a centimetre. He flipped onto his back, and when Saturn brought the weapon down again, he actually caught the blade in his hands, offered MIstress Saturn a cheeky smile, then pushed off again, taking the Glaive with him.  
  
"Give that back!" Saturn snarled.  
  
"Oh come on," Ranma chidded, "Surely I taught you better than this, Saturn. I mean, weapons? A battle between warriors is fought with the greatest weapons of all! Hands, feet - body parts, y'know?"  
  
"I am stronger than you!"  
  
"Oh, sure, but you're stupid."  
  
"Stupid?!?"  
  
"Yeah," Ranma countered, twirling the Glaive around and testing its weight in his hand, gazing appreciatively at the reflected pattern of light on the blade as it spun. "I mean, ya know, you had me convinced you were some evil bitch now. For a little bit. Like, half a minute. And this Yoshihiro, he's using you. I know that. I guess you're not quite stupid enough to not know that."  
  
Saturn's feet thumped deeper into the ground as she grew ever more angry, and power flowed from her freely, creatinh a visible aura around her body. "I'm his new General," she replied, finally, voice tight.  
  
"Nah... see, that's not true, even," Ranma said, tossing the Glaive back to Saturn. She caught it in one hand, spun it behind her back in a ready-posture Ranma had taught her with bamboo sticks. "He doesn't want another General. Especially not one of your power. 'Cause, he can't trust you. By definition, he *has* to be stronger than his Generals... and you're stronger than him. What if you wanna take over? He can't stop you. And if he could, you could blow up the world."  
  
"Why does this mean I'm stupid?" An evil glare.  
  
"Oh, no reason, really. Bad guys are always just stupid. It's like a natural law or somethin'."  
  
The smirk did it. Mistress Saturn gave an inarticulate roar of anger, and sped at Ranma. He dodged, easily, and she pummelled through a wall, into the street beyond, and into a house on the other side of that before she checked her charge and turned. Ranma stood in the street, smirking more. It was that arrogant smirk Saturn had seen often as Hotaru, and even as Sailor Saturn, the smirk that Ranma gave an enemy who was defeated and just didn't know it yet.  
  
She wasn't defeated, though. She was still stronger than Ranma, could heal herself faster, could last longer. Ranma couldn't match her endurance. And although he kept hitting places that really hurt, and she was in no mood to try and stop fighting long enough to heal herself from the more serious tags, she could still withstand more physical damage than Ranma could.  
  
She decided to prove that.  
  
******  
  
The blur of motion wasn't as fast as Ranma was capable of moving, but Ranma was tiring a little by now. In the five or so minutes since the fight had started, he'd been moving at as close to top speed as he could, and although he'd recovered a lot of energy in the past month and a half from that youma attack under the university library, he felt as if he wasn't yet at peak fighting capacity. He often felt drained, slow, weak... indeed, it had only really been little more than an hour and a half since he'd last expended a lot of energy fighting Hotaru... Mistress Saturn.  
  
He still had no idea how to bring her back, but he'd succeeded already in the first half of his self-appointed mission: he'd gotten Mistress Saturn angry.  
  
So angry, in fact, it might be hard to contain her aggression.  
  
And Ranma, tiring, couldn't move from her path quickly enough.  
  
It felt like a freight train hit his chest.  
  
Something snapped, and he felt pain. Agony, actually; pain was too simple a word, didn't have within the makeup of the word the associated sensations now playing hell up and down his nervous system.  
  
Yet, that remarkable internal energy that fuelled him had him on his feet again within a second. A hand clamped down around the ribs that had given under the force, the other held up, ready to parry or block Saturn's follow-up attack.  
  
The kick swung at his chest again, Saturn obviously hoping to capitalise on the injury she'd just caused. Ranma's free hand intercepted it, but the force drove him backwards, feet digging deep furrows in the surface of the road. The pain lessened as the ribs started knitting under his hands, and Ranma brought up his second arm to assist the first in parrying and blocking. Give it a few more of Saturn's swings, he thought, and he might be able to go on the offensive again.  
  
He didn't give any untoward attention to the fact he was healing a lot faster than normal, but then, his attention was focussed elsewhere rather intimately.  
  
Saturn's fist slammed into his braced forearms, the impact stinging. A bone gave in his left arm, but he shook the bone back into place and gave it no further thought. A pair of quick blows came in towards his head, and rather than parry of block them, Ranma bent over backwards at the hips, hands grabbing the ground, Saturn's fists passing through the space where his head had been.  
  
With Mistress Saturn already overbalanced and committed to her move, Ranma flicked his body upwards, wrapping his legs around Saturn's midriff on the way, brought her up and over his body, and slammed her headfirst into the ground.  
  
But this still wasn't helping cure her. Was only helping hurt her. Hurt her more than she'd already been hurt. Ranma was starting to find he didn't want to be doing this, that if there was no breakthrough in the next few minutes, if she didn't come to her senses, he might have to leave her to live out her new life. He didn't know what to do. At an impasse mentally, he missed Saturn's next attack: a punch that threw him back through the exterior wall back into the Tendo's yard.  
  
His jaw severely bruised, Ranma rubbed around his mouth with one hand while his other tracked Saturn. She'd just healed herself again while he stood there, and smirked at him. She was still angry, but obviously once more feeling in control, superior to her ex-boyfriend.  
  
"So, Ranma, no cocky comments now, eh?" she asked, teasingly. "Tell you what: give it up now. I'll make you like me... we can do things together."  
  
"Whad kund uf dings?" Ranma asked, trying to get some feeling back into his jaw.  
  
"You know, kinky games involving game show hosts, frogs, candles and intimate apparel, walks along the beach under the light of a burning city, eating the livers of hardworking manga artists... I can think of lots, lots more fun things for us to do." The smile in her voice disturbed Ranma. Yet, there was almost something underneath it that appealed to him. Not in the attractive way, but something calling for help. There wasn't the casual disregarding of their previous relationship apparent at the moment; no, she was suggesting it could continue.  
  
*IF* Ranma joined her. Or if she joined Ranma...? She wanted him. But why? Moderating influence? No. Likely support in a move against Yoshihiro. But wouldn't he have forseen something like that happening? Surely, since he'd manipulated Natsumi in the way he had into making such a challenge a few weeks earlier by making sure she had the power to support her attacks on his primary General, he'd have known what Saturn would do once she had Ranma on her side, supporting her? Ranma hadn't actually thought he was right earlier, about bad people being inherently stupid - if he was right, there couldn't have been so much unsolved crime in the world - but if he hadn't known what would happen if Ranma lost this fight, or joined Mistress Saturn, then he had to be some kind of extremely special idiot.  
  
But perhaps it was something else. While he had a moment to think, he wondered...  
  
******  
  
Nemesis had watched the fight with worried interest. She'd watched her sensei take hits that should have turned him into jelly. She'd watched him deliver blows that could have demolished buildings. She'd watched the arrogant smirk on his face that had been making Mistress Saturn even more angry than before.  
  
Saturn obviously wasn't having fun right now. She seemed to be tortured. In two minds. That was something Nemesis had great experience with... if one added in a lot of other numbers to that low amount of personalities. She had guessed Ranma was trying to find some method of bringing Hotaru back to the surface. Bringing back the runt would make certain things more difficult, as Nemesis had already worked out, but it could make things even worse. Her feelings for Ranma, stretching back as far as they did, had some of her more obsessive personalities in an uproar over the fact he had a girlfriend that wasn't her. If she ever forgot to take her pills one morning, or thought once again she was cured, or could handle the voices pulling her into that deep sea of molasses again, she might end up doing some things she'd later regret.  
  
Like kill someone.  
  
Most likely Hotaru. Although her track record with men wasn't too good, either. She'd hate to kill Ranma.  
  
But... loving someone meant being hurt. Because, Nemesis had found out long ago, loving someone as much as one could didn't mean that their feelings back would be that great... or even a noticeable fraction of that amount. Yet, all one could do was love that person, and do whatever one could to help that person when in time of need.  
  
And Ranma was in time of great need.  
  
For all his strength and newfound maturity and his street smarts, Ranma didn't know much about people's minds that wasn't related to combat. His emotive maturity that had recently started showing through, that side of him that now amde him stop and consider what he was about to say before he opened his mouth, his intelligence, none of that helped when dealing with matters of personality. And Nemesis knew lots about that aspect of life.  
  
She thought, and thought hard, while the two combatants faced off silently. Ranma's jaw seemed to be clenching and unclenching, Saturn's fists bunched and unbunched while she waited for a response. For all the fact she was dressed now as a tart of some kind, with the smart-assed, hatefilled personality to match, she seemed to be really worried about Ranma's decision. Like she was wanting him to help her take over the Dark Kingdom's forces or something.  
  
Help...  
  
Something clicked in her head. She turned to Mars. "You made a psychic connection with Mistress Saturn, right?"  
  
Mars ndoded. "Yeah. Back at the dorm. She sounded scared."  
  
"Needing, right? Wanting to be saved?"  
  
"Yeah. By Ranma."  
  
Click. "She sounded like... herself, right?"  
  
Mars nodded again, curious as to where this was going.  
  
Nemesis whipped around to face Ranma. "She's still in there!" she yelled. "Wanting you to help her!"  
  
"I guessed that," Ranma shot back. His voice sounded normal again, which was good. "This whole 'join me and together we can rule the universe' thing kinda gave it away."  
  
"No!" Nemesis tried again. "I mean, Hotaru's wanting you to help her! She's in there, scared and alone while someone else has control of her!"  
  
Mars stared at her. "You want to try giving her your pills?" she asked, incredulously.  
  
Nemesis shook her head. She went to yell something more, but Ranma had gotten the idea. Before Mistress Saturn could react, Ranma had sprung into action, grabbing her and leaping up into the air, disappearing across rooftops at blurred speed. Saturn's Silence Glaive dropped to the ground, bounced once at each end, then settled at rest on the grass.  
  
******  
  
Saturn hadn't been ready for the manoeuvre. Ranma had leapt at her, dodged around to behind her, then wrapped his arms up around her shoulders from under her arms, locking her into position with a knee in the small of her back. She twisted, struggled to get free, but she felt the kick of ki being expelled from Ranma's feet in great quantities and they took to the air. With her arms trapped, trying to break free caused her to drop her Glaive. But she knew Ranma couldn't keep this up forever. He was likely just taking her to somewhere people couldn't get hurt in the crossfire.  
  
Not that Saturn cared. Not really. People were just sheep, Yoshihiro said. Sheep, following one another in their insignificant lives. How much better would they be, forced into some kind of order? What kind of cities could they build, what sized monuments to their rulers could be erected with a properly harnessed workforce?  
  
Strange... Mistress Saturn had a flash of crystal spires, massed gardens, city layouts based around transmission of natural energies... but then it was gone.  
  
Ranma touched down in a park devoid of people. Animals scampered into hiding, and Saturn prepared herself to fight again, preparing to whirl around once Ranma released her to spring back for his own preparatory movements for his next set of attacks.  
  
But his arms didn't move. They stayed locked around her, firmly. Saturn struggled, pulled, but Ranma stuck to her like glue, didn't let her break free. He was silent behind her.  
  
She tried to elbow him in the stomach, and succeeded, but apart from the quick rush of air from Ranma's mouth, he didn't make a sound, nor did he let go of his captive. She was still trapped.  
  
And she felt trapped. Nervous now, she tried to pull away again, tried smashing Ranma backwards through a tree, dropped to the ground and rolled on him. Yet still he held on. She got up, saw a cemented rock wall. She turned her back to it, and charged it, feeling Ranma sink into the wall with a light burst of ki at the last moment to stop from doing any serious damage to himself.  
  
Finally, knowing he wouldn't and couldn't be thrown so easily, she asked, quietly, "Why won't you get off? Don't you want to fight me anymore?" She heard to start of a whine in her voice, hated herself for it.  
  
"No," Ranma said from behind her ear, equally quiet, almost breathing in her ear as he spoke. The feel of his breath tingled along her earlobe as it was, exciting her, also calming her from the rage she'd been enraptured in. "I didn't want to fight you at all, Hotaru. And I finally realised I was doing this all wrong."  
  
"Wrong?" She struggled again, fruitlessly trying to rid herself of what was suspiciously starting to feel like a conscience.  
  
"Yeah, wrong. You see, Hotaru, I think I was trying to give you a chance to fight this... possession yourself. Trying to get whatever is in your mind preoccupied enough so you could take control again. But... that didn't work. Because what was in your mind... is you. Your darker impulses given form, set free and given control of you. Nemesis just gave me the rest of the story."  
  
"What story?" Saturn had slowed her struggling now. Still angry, but curious. She told herself she was merely waiting until Ranma loosened his grip, and *then* she'd attack.  
  
"That you were wanting help. I wasn't giving you that help." She felt Ranma shrug behind her. "I was being me. Everything's something to beat up, that's the solution to every problem."  
  
"It is!"  
  
"Nah... mostly, it is. But not always. And this is one case where me hitting something isn't going to do much good. So, I'm going to hold you."  
  
Hold her? He thought he could do this for any length of time?  
  
Ranma continued. "You're not liking this. You hate this. Hate what's being done to you. What's being done in your name. And me, I'm being a bad boyfriend. I guess I have a thing about girls hitting me now... Akane did it for so long, and so did shampoo and Ukyou even...! I... I didn't like being hit again, by you especially. And so I fought. I didn't stop to think that there was another way of looking at this."  
  
"What way?" Saturn was caught up now, despite herself. She gave a struggle, more for image than anything. Ranma's grip was still too tight.  
  
"That I was being stupid. Trying to get you angry, distracted... it's my fault, Hotaru. I should have paid more attention to you. I know that now. I didn't notice you being manipulated... well, not as much as I should have. I was too busy feeling jealous, thinking of myself rather than thinking of you."  
  
He let Saturn go then, and she didn't move, for a moment startled by the move into inaction. Besides, Ranma's body, alternating between soft and hard behind her, was kind of nice...  
  
But then, reason kicked in. And she jumped from him. Turned around to face him. His face was full of compassion for her.  
  
No, not for her, for what she had been.  
  
She felt tears come to her eyes. Felt her fingers bunch up into fists.  
  
"I'll always be here for you, Hotaru," he said, simply.  
  
She punched him. Hard. She felt the bone give under the force of her impact. Then she punched him again, with her other fist. Not quite so hard. Ranma was knocked about, but always turned back to face her, compassionate, somehow seeming as something much superior to what she was. It was the smile. That one that said, "I know what you're going through, and I know how much you're hating yourself right now, but I'm here for you in any way you need, and if that's beating me up, well, then, go to it."  
  
And she did. She punched, punched, hit Ranma as she could manage it. It wasn't a particularly fast pace - in fact, Ranma seemed to be healing almost as fast as she was injuring him. And still that look.  
  
Then his face changed, blurred somehow. Saturn blinked back the tears, swelling hotly in the corners of her eyes. She continued to hit Ranma.  
  
"Damn you! Fuck you! I HATE you!" she howled. "I fucking hate you! You did this to me, you didn't care, you played with HER!" Another punch. More tears.  
  
Then the punches grew lighter, the screams of anger transformed into sobs of despair and self-pity. She couldn't get any force into her arms to smack Ranma around anymore, and Ranma took her into his arms.  
  
"I'm so sorry," he whispered to her as she sobbed. "I'm just so sorry."  
  
Saturn was happy he was sorry. Happy, viciously happy, and hoping that he felt at least as bad as she did right now. She couldn't hold onto her transformed form any longer, and Ranma's arms tightened around her that much more, drawing her in closer to him, resting her head on his chest. "Why didn't you notice?" she whispered.  
  
For that, for the moment, Ranma had no words.  
  
Then, Hotaru stopped her sobbing, was quiet for a scant moment as she Remembered. "Ooooohhh..." she got out before bursting into some serious tears. Ranma guessed what she'd remembered - the damage done, the people injured, those she'd tried to kill for fun - and stayed silent, holding her, stroking her hair, wondering - now that the threat was over - just how he'd manage to pick up the pieces.  
  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Sorry. She says sorry. So do I. First things first, excuses. Those who remember that our dog died a few months back might be happy to know we've got two puppies recently. We bought them a month ago, two little brothers, toy poodles again, gorgeous as sin. But for the first two weeks, I had to look after them constantly, had almost no computer time, thus got no writing done. Following the period where I needed to be around them 100% of the time, I got an upgrade to the 3d software I do what I laughably occasionally call art with, and I spent another 2 weeks bringing myself up to speed with the new features. So, it's been a month before either of my current series have been updated.  
  
Did start this chapter, and chapter 3 of X-Com, about a week ago, but this one's had me stumped until tonight. And the ending of this chapter nearly had me put it off for another few days, until I could figure out another decent ending (since I suddenly realised when I got to it that my original plans just wouldn't hold any kind of water).  
  
Now, because I wanted to get some sleep, and to have this chapter posted tonight before I disconnected from the net, there's some stuff missing from the end of this chapter. But... in all honesty, it doesn't belong here, but in the next chapter or two... people dealing with Hotaru. Hopefully will have the next chapter up in a fortnight... hoping to settle into a routine of doing a chapter of this one week, one of X-Com the next, but may speed up occasionally, or slow down as needed due to RL or writer's block. But am trying to keep to it at the moment.  
  
Okay, thanks for hanging in there until I got this chapter finished, thanks to the guys in #void for putting up with me saying, "Okay, gonna write tonight... *yawn* damn, too tired, heading to bed" an awful lot more often than I'd have liked.  
  
Next time: The dealing. The pain. The agony. Are things back the way they were? Will Ranma tell Hotaru just where he swallowed that dictionary? Who knows? Not me, I just write the damned thing... 


	10. Love 10

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 10  
  
** Sometimes, That's All That's Needed **  
  
  
  
"So, you feel better now? That's good. Here... I think it's mostly clean. Wipe your eyes... that's better."  
  
"Danks."  
  
"You sure you're feeling better?"  
  
"Yes. I... I think I'm okay."  
  
"So... why you do it?"  
  
"Please... I'd rather not talk right now. I just want your arms around me."  
  
"You know that's a given. I mean, I really should have -"  
  
"Shush."  
  
"But -"  
  
"Not now. Maybe not ever... they're things that..."  
  
"... don't need to be talked about right now?"  
  
"Maybe... maybe not ever. ... You ever just look at the sky?"  
  
"Yeah. Sometimes. Whaddya think I do on the roof all day?"  
  
"I thought you were looking to avoid Usagi."  
  
"Well... she's got that whole 'idiot' air about her, you know."  
  
"She's not all that bad. She's one of the most caring people I know... one of the friendliest people, and just... so nice to people. She's not the sort of person who'll say no to someone if she can."  
  
"That doesn't sound so good."  
  
"She's also fairly... mmm... chaste doesn't quite fit there. Committed, though, yeah."  
  
"I see her in the kitchen and think she SHOULD be committed, sometimes."  
  
"Hee hee... you really did try her cooking, didn't you?"  
  
"I'm not sure if she's worse than Akane, really."  
  
"She's a good person."  
  
"I'm not disputin' that. Really, I'm not! Just she can be too much ta take at times. You know? And ya gotta get away from that sometimes."  
  
"Mmmm. But the sky..."  
  
"The view from the roof of the dorm's good. Great, too. So blue... so big... yet seeming so small."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Remember I told you about the training trips my pop and I took? We went to some places where there were really big spaces. Flat fields, no hills or mountains in sight. Just huge flat regions. And man... the skies you'd see out there... really huge. Like, so much bigger, ya know? Because there was nothing to put them in... scale...?"  
  
"Perspective?"  
  
"Mmm. Just nothin' to give it perspective. Nothing to say, this hill's bigger than the sky! This tree's huge! Nothing. The sky went from the flat ground on one side of the horizon to the flat ground on the other side. And there was nothing in between. Really brilliant blues. And storms in those places were somethin' ta see... huge black and purple and grey clouds... big bursts of lightning and rolls of thunder... the skies here are nothing, really."  
  
"You're taking away my enjoyment of this moment."  
  
"You ever seen anything like that?"  
  
"Once, I guess. When I was sick all the time, when I was younger. And my father... took me to America so a research team there could study me, maybe cure me. At least, that was what I thought. Who knows, now? And up in the plane... the sky was a really light blue, almost white at the edges, where it met the clouds and seas, deepening to a dark purple... almost a black, directly above the plane. I was ill at the time, and didn't feel like watching all that much. But I did look outside once, really looked. And thought, wow, that's just so beautiful. I forgot I was sick for a while, just gazed out at this sight... couldn't believe it."  
  
"So, why are ya asking about the sky?"  
  
"It's something to talk about. And I can see it up there, and it looks so beautiful right now. I... I didn't think I'd be seeing anything like that ever again... not like this. So you've got no idea how beautiful this looks right now."  
  
"You're, uh, looking down my shirt."  
  
"Hee hee... I didn't think I'd ever see this again... like this... oh, that was -"  
  
"Ssshhh... you said not to talk about it."  
  
"Yeah. But -"  
  
"No buts. You mentioned the sky?"  
  
"Yes. It's... just seeming very special to me right now."  
  
"Mmmm. And it reminded you of Usagi."  
  
"No, it reminded YOU of Usagi."  
  
"You want me ta go find her or -"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Okay..."  
  
"No, it's not that... she's special. Very special. And I'm going to have to spend some time with her, sort my head out, just figure out what went... on... and why... well, why I let that happen. I... we... please..."  
  
"Ssshhh. What are you going to do for school now?"  
  
"I hadn't thought of that... I... I haven't thought of a lot of things. I can't really go back to Furinkan, can I? We... well, we levelled it."  
  
"Construction companies in this ward are really good at fixing stuff like that. I should know; I've caused lots of that kinda damage myself."  
  
"You sound so proud!"  
  
"Sometimes. Other times... when I'm by myself, thinking, with no one trying to kill me... I wonder if being able to smash concrete with a single finger is something to be proud of."  
  
"How do you mean?"  
  
"Well... it gets me into stupid fights. Even now, when I'm trying ta be all grown up. Mature."  
  
"You ARE mature."  
  
"Not really. If I was, I'd have seen what was happening here and -"  
  
"That's not something you can say. I mean it! No, let me finish. You and I... we're very alike. It's... as you said, it's a matter of scale. On a good day, I can destroy planets. I'm a really big gun. Like... field artillery, I guess you'd say. I can kill a lot of people with one shot. But I'm not accurate. I'm very much overkill for nearly any situation, used like that, using my powers like that. You... you could barely level a city by yourself, in a short amount of time. Maybe you could, I'm not belittling you here, so just listen. You're like a combat knife. Something to be used effectively by the highly skilled. You can kill just as many people as the artillery piece, just not as fast. But you're a much harder to hit target, you move faster between kills, and you can... so easily... defeat the crew on the artillery. Which makes me... the piece... useless. You BEAT me, and that's not easy."  
  
"I didn't beat you, I just got lucky."  
  
"You believe that as much as I do. Had that fight continued, ... I'd have given out before you. What makes you so special there is your feelings for your friends and your family and yourself. Before... before, I had none of that. I.. existed for the pleasure of the act of destruction. A gun that was able to fire itself. Something that's very dangerous."  
  
"I think you'd have stopped before you seriously hurt anyone innocent."  
  
"You sound almost like you believe that. But I know otherwise. Those people at the school - you - the Tendos..."  
  
"Sssshhh... come on, stop sobbing. Please? Come on, talk to me some more. Your hair feels so beautiful... thought I was going to never tough this again..."  
  
"You're lying. It's all messy."  
  
"A little matted with sweat, yeah, but hey, I'm a martial artist! I'm used ta sweat-soaked women."  
  
"Oh, really?"  
  
"Yeah, I mean, Ukyou, you know, she'd just get worked up over something and her hair - why are you laugh- Ah. Yeah, okay, that's nothing dirty, Ukyou's just a friend. A long-time friend."  
  
"And a fiance."  
  
"I'm past that, you know that."  
  
"I know... I just feel the need to tease you at the moment. You know, distance you a little. This is too scary. I just tried to kill -"  
  
"Now stop right there! I don't wanna be hearing any of that kinda stuff from you! You weren't trying to kill me. You weren't trying to kill anything, except that wall. So don't you be feeling guilty over that, okay?"  
  
"I can't help it! We're sitting here, talking so normally, me curled up against your chest! Like nothing's happened. The trees here are so beautiful, everything's so peaceful, and I'm wearing the uniform I was wearing when I broke your heart! How can you even begin to look at me? How can you stand to be near me? How -"  
  
"Just be quiet, okay? Okay? Calm down, settle down. We'll talk. Not now. Later."  
  
"But -"  
  
"No buts. Come on, settle down again. That's it. Mmmm... this is so nice, you know. Holding you, lying on the grass, under some trees... man... your hair just smells really nice. Reminds me of Makoto after a workout in the morning."  
  
"Doesn't she just make breakfasts for everyone? I haven't seen her out with us... well, very occasionally she's out there training with us, but not that often."  
  
"We're up before dawn, the two of us. We spar a little then... she's a good fighter, for someone relatively untrained. She knows where her strengths and weaknesses lie... have you noticed what everyone's like when fighting now? There's more of an element of co-ordination between you all since you've all been training. If only I could find Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury... then I might be able to try teaching you guys some serious team tactics..."  
  
"Us senshi aren't enough for you? You want MORE?"  
  
"I always want more! Heh... seriously, it'd be much better if I could train you all to a minimum standard. But Sailor Moon might take some training... she's a klutz."  
  
"She's not as bad now as she once was."  
  
"Maybe not, but Usagi's the only other person I know that clumsy. What? What are you grinning at?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"No, what?"  
  
"Nothing. Forget I smiled. It's just like you said, they ARE so similar. You'd think they're the same person."  
  
"Almost. Usagi just doesn't have that snobbish regal air about her. Except when she's done some crimes against humanity."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Cooked. Then you'd think they were twins."  
  
"Yessss... you might think that. But it'd get no further than that, right? You'd start thinking about something else?"  
  
"Mmm."  
  
"Like what's on television?"  
  
"Nahh... more like how can I get this foulness out of my mouth without spitting it through a window. Cause, you know, I'd only be having to fix it later in the day. And Usagi's cooking isn't worth that kinda bother."  
  
"Do you like... Makoto?"  
  
"How do you mean?"  
  
"I mean, do you find her attractive?"  
  
"Weird question."  
  
"Well, she's got those legs under her skirt... you know... and I can't match them."  
  
"You might as well as if I have a thing for Mitsuki. Her legs are much more my type."  
  
"Ouch."  
  
"I mean, they're more muscular. Still soft and smooth looking, but also fairly deadly. Powerful."  
  
"My legs don't come into it with you?"  
  
"Can I answer this in a way that's not gonna get me slapped?"  
  
"I'd be glad if you... yes. Yes. I won't hit you. Not again. God, why'd you have to -"  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't be! It's not your fault -"  
  
"Yes it is! Why can't you see that? I could have -"  
  
"You couldn't have done anything because I wanted it to -"  
  
"That's where you're wrong."  
  
"What, because you were stuck in your female body, you think I wasn't as attracted to you? Is that it? I felt more of you during those weeks than I had in the months prior to that! Those first few days after you woke up, I felt your chest. It felt like mine. Well, bigger than mine. Softer. But like mine. And I enjoyed it! I enjoyed feeling your legs when you were like that, the hugs, the light, special, secret kisses, the glances, the talks. So if you think I wasn't into that scene, forget it! I LIKED YOU BEING A WOMAN! That had nothing to do with what happened."  
  
"I didn't say it did."  
  
"It was -"  
  
"My turn. You know, it's hard for me to hear that. I got brought up, ya know, to be a man among men. And so in that situation, being a girl can sometimes be really confusing. Hurtful, too. But I live with that, keep that inside. Try to, anyway, 'cause hey, it's still me and it's still you and we're both adult enough to know that. I KNOW what happened had nothin' ta do with that. Hey, it was all HIM. You know it. I felt it. I felt HIM just as much as you did. Maybe I was stronger up here, in my head, or maybe it's something ta do with the fact that I'm really a guy and hate thinking of myself as a girl, even when I AM one... and maybe that was why I got away, could control what my body did in response to him and his power. Or maybe... just maybe... he was always interested in you. Put you against me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I dunno. It's not like I could fight the guy to a standstill like I could you. He might not be as strong as you, but I'm willing to bet he's plenty strong and really skilled. His monsters, if they're supposed to be weaker than him, then he's stronger than you, me, and the rest of your senshi friends put together. That really scares me. What if he starts taking a personal interest in us used to be a nightmare I had. Earlier today, he started taking an interest in us. I am so close to needing my pants changed right now you wouldn't believe it."  
  
"You're not that scared. I'd feel it here otherwise."  
  
"Hey! I'm ticklish there! Stop! Stop! Phew... okay. I hide my fear. It don't do nothing except make me weaker than I am. If I stop and think, hey, I can't beat this guy, then I've already lost. I need to be able to say I CAN win this fight, I CAN beat this creep, if I'm going to have any chance. There's no shame in losing a fight... if you continued to fight. And hey, you continued to fight. I could feel it. You were so hurt inside, but you fought. Your friends knew that, too. Everyone did. Even that creep Yoshihiro did, too. You fought long and hard, and you've nothing to be ashamed of."  
  
"I hurt you."  
  
"And I hurt you, too. I didn't know what was going on inside you, or perhaps, like a couple of months ago, I was thinking it would be better for ya to forget about me. Or somethin'. I don't know myself, really. All I know is I let it happen and that's got to hurt you, you knowing that I knew what was going on and not trying to stop it."  
  
"What hurt more was hurting you. I saw your face. All the time. When I was saying those things. He didn't really -"  
  
"I know."  
  
"I've got to say it. He didn't really... KNOW me like that. He... he does know me in ways you never could... I didn't lie... but he knows me like that because of him controlling me, insinuating himself throughout my mind. I hated that, hated his touch - and yet... yet..."  
  
"There was something about him. An aura. That attracted you so strongly. Made you... uh..."  
  
"You're so cute when you blush, you know that? Aroused? See? I can say it, nothing to be ashamed of."  
  
"Then why'd your voice drop down to a whisper?"  
  
"Uuuhhh..."  
  
"Heh. Yeah. Aroused. Physically. I saw what he did to you. And I felt those things, too. I like girls. I like girls a lot! Uh..."  
  
"There's nothing wrong with admitting that, you know."  
  
"It sounds weird to have to say it out loud. Ya know, I've had to date boys sometimes... back here in Nerima. Not had, exactly, but usually I wanted something they had. Cure for my curse, jewel I've needed to beat some bad guy, as a means to escape from one or another of my... fiances or suitors. But anyway. I like girls. I only like girls. And he was making me... excited."  
  
"How would you know how a girl reacts like when she's... aroused?"  
  
"Can you speak up a bit? I didn't hear that last word.."  
  
"AROUSED! I SAID AROUSED!"  
  
"Ouch! Didn't hav'ta yell. But hey, I've been a woman for a few years, ya know, and you start realising somethings sometimes. Even if you don't live in a house with three very frustrated girls in... how did pops put it that time? In the prime of their lives. Or something. Never know half the time what he's talking about."  
  
"So... you felt it, too?"  
  
"My legs turning to jelly? Fire in my stomach? Clothes that feel too tight? Lungs that don't seem to be able to suck as much breath as usual in?"  
  
"Before I met you, and started getting more fit than I was, I felt like that all the time."  
  
"But like that?"  
  
"... yes..."  
  
"Nothin' ta be ashamed of. He DOES that to you. It's not magical power, least, not as you'd think of it. It's power. Sheer physical power. If I could pump myself up like that, you'd feel like that around me, too."  
  
"... yes..."  
  
"Uh... you're blushing... again... uh... I am just gonna forget this after we leave here, you know that, don't you?"  
  
"You aren't comfortable knowing I feel like that... about you... all the time? That's why... that's why I was a little hurt. You didn't fight for me, and that hurt me lots. That's... why I gave in. If you didn't want me... then why fight against it? Why fight him? He wanted me. Even if it was wrong."  
  
"I... didn't fight, because... you've met the Tendos. You know how things go in my life. How girls go. I was always... something to be fought over. Not someone to be loved - heck, not even a something to be loved! My best friend... my rival... he got more affection from my fiance than I did. AKane and I... we... had feelings for each other. But... we couldn't... work them through. And her problems... are what led to us breaking up for the last time. She'll always be my friend. But I'm not putting myself in a position where my girlfriend is going to hit me again."  
  
"I am so sorry about that."  
  
"Hey, I was hitting you back. Something I never did to Akane, 'cause she couldn't handle it. If circumstances with her had been the same as with you... maybe... I dunno. I don't feel right hitting girls."  
  
"I know. And I see how it affects you whenever we fight a woman monster. But when you're a girl - like you are when fighting with us - you don't seem to have much the same restriction on yourself. Is that because you see yourself as a girl then?"  
  
"Uh-uh. Nothing like that. Just... I'm that bit weaker. I don't feel so bad then, y'know?"  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"... I... I've got to ask... how can we make things normal between us again? I don't want to forget this Mistress Saturn problem... it may yet crop up again... and it may end up helping us at some time in the future. But... I want things to be normal between us again."  
  
"Things are never normal between us. I change sex when splashed with water. You can crack planets like I can crack walnuts and have hosted two evil entities now, by my count. How can any relationship between two such people be considered normal?"  
  
"I -"  
  
"I'm kidding. Kinda. How normal is this? We're sitting in a park, you leaning into me... my arms around you... yours around me... our lips barely apart, although we're not really looking at each other... the park around is quiet... the sky above is darkening... the full moon that's rising now... is making you look even more beautiful that I can ever remember seeing you before. Not even that first time I caught you when you fell from the roof... that moment we shared in the fountain, when these monsters first showed up... our date... and right now, this feels no different."  
  
"I love you, you know."  
  
"Yeah. I think I did. For some time. That kiss... that first one... I think that said it all."  
  
"I want this to work."  
  
"I still remember that nervous young woman standing at my door, trying to act brave, holding up a condom."  
  
"I'm so embarrassed... I'm sorry..."  
  
"I know you are. And that's the point. We can apologise to each other for years yet. And what will it achieve? Nothing. We'll move further and further apart, until all that's left between us is just empty words, us being puppets going through the motions of trying to make it up to one another. So, we give each other another apology, and we move on. We build on this. Our first fight! We should celebrate this."  
  
"With Usagi's cooking?"  
  
"If I wanted to commit suicide, I'd ask Akane to pave the way. At least she'd do the job right. Ow!"  
  
"All right. Ranma Saotome, I am so very sorry for causing you the pain I did. There's no excuse -"  
  
"Just the apology. Excuses... they're not needed. We KNOW, deep down, why it happened. And it had nothing to do with either of us. So likewise, Hotaru Tomoe, I am so deeply, truly sorry for hurting you."  
  
"Ranma...?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I liked calling you sempai... would... would you mind...?"  
  
"Not at all."  
  
"Okay. Sempai... can we go... somewhere a little more... private? The grass is getting wet and I'm not wearing anything that'll keep me dry for long..."  
  
"Yeah, sure."  
  
"Thanks, sempai."  
  
"Uh, Hotaru-chan? While we're on the subject of wanting things... would you mind keeping that Mistress Saturn uniform around? It was kinda sexOW!"  
  
"Sure thing, sempai. Give you something to look forward to."  
  
"... that is just so much an evil giggle..."  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Watch Saikano. I cannot stress how much that show rocks.  
  
Ahem. Chapter 10: The Apology is released. Rejoice muchly in the streets with boutiful baskets of something or other. Gonna go and finish coughing my lungs out now... and continue with Saikano... and try and NOT start something Saikano based ;)  
  
Next chapter: Ranma finds out about the internet. 'Nuff said; see you then! 


	11. Love 11

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 11  
  
** Immoral Combat **  
  
  
  
The morning was quiet. Ranma had cancelled training for the day, and all Usagi heard as she woke was the muted murmur of conversation from the kitchen below. No doubt Makoto had been up as early as usual, making breakfast and lunches for everyone. No one in the dorm could pack a lunch as tightly or tastfully as Makoto, Usagi reflected as she stretched out to unkink tired muscles. Like the other senshi, she hadn't actually done much the day before - she half-suspected Ranma's last words before he'd retired for the night had been because he'd be aching like nobodies' business after the huge fight with Mistress Saturn the day before - but watching that intense fight in fast-forward, and helping to clean up the resultant mess, had tired Usagi like she hadn't been in a long time. Idly, she wished Mamoru were there, in bed, with her that morning. She could so use an extra hand before breakfast.  
  
Eventually, she made her way downstairs, dressed still in her pyjamas and wearing fluffy bunny slippers on her feet. Hotaru, eyes downcast, passed her in the hallway at the base of the stairs, taking a small tray with some rice and sauces into her room, closing the door behind her. She seemed to be embarrassed, Usagi thought. But time to fix that later. First came breakfast.  
  
There were two boxes outside the kitchen door. One was black, the other white. Both had small crescent moons stencilled on the front. "Morning, Luna, Artemis," Usagi grumbled as she passed by. Luna replied, but the response was muffled too much by the cardboard.  
  
Why'd the cats have to stay in the boxes, anyway? Ranma wasn't around, he'd have to be asleep still - or off in one of the hot springs, trying to recover from the beating he'd only received just hours ago. And seriously, Usagi didn't believe that Ranma had some kind of majorly bad reaction to cats. She had taken what Mitsuki and Hotaru had said happened in the restaurant on the night of their infamous date with a grain of salt - more like the whole shaker, actually - and had all but completely ignored it. Ranma didn't show any signs of problems with anything else - except women, but seeing as he was a complete idiot and jerk, that was understandable and thus ignorable - so it either had to be a put-on or the others had faked it.  
  
This whole sex-change curse thing, that was interesting. Usagi guessed their was something funny about that, too, and assumed that perhaps Ranma had done the sex change thing to see naked girls. But then, she'd seen him when he was female, seen him naked, knew that he was, as she'd once heard it put, 'anatomically correct'. Which made that theory seem quite unlikely.   
  
Besides, who believed in curses these days? There was no such thing. Ami'd know what the story was there; Usagi decided she'd have to ask Ami about it later.  
  
She pushed open the door to the kitchen, and threw her arms out wide. "Goood mooorning," she sang as she swept inside, tiredness gone as The Usagi Show took over and filled her with the almost limitless energy she could often display anywhere but within a classroom.  
  
Barring Hotaru, everyone was there. Ami, Rei, Minako, Makoto, Mitsuki, Ranma. Ranma? She checked again. Yep, Ranma. Lifting up one of the cupboards with one hand while doing something completely cunning with a wrench with the other. He twisted the wrench upwards, and Makoto gave a happy sigh. "Water's stopped," she said to him. He nodded, and put the cupboard down again, gently.  
  
"I'll get on to that while you're all... doing whatever you'll all be doing this fine Saturday," he said to Makoto. Ranma's free hand reached up and scratched the back of his head. "I don't know how that pipe could have burst again, though," he continued. "I only replaced them... oh yeah... before I... uh... you know."  
  
"Before the university accident?" Minako chimed in from behind. Usagi watched Ranma blush.  
  
"Yeah, that's the one."  
  
"Thanks, Ranma. But... they still haven't replaced the library yet, and the nearby rooms are blocked off. So none of us have classes today."  
  
"Ahhh... can I have the kitchen to myself for a few hours?"  
  
"Yes, won't be a problem. I'll be finished soon, then we can shoo everybody out." Makoto looked a little shy. "Would you need a hand?"  
  
Ranma, not noticing Makoto's hesitance, shook his head. "No... but someone'd better say good morning to Usagi before she short-sheets you guys again."  
  
There was a chorus of "Good morning"'s directed at Usagi moments later. Usagi grumped, but cheered almost immediately again. "I'm going to see Mamoru today!" she announced. Ranma looked over.  
  
"He coming over again? Could use a hand in the kitchen here."  
  
Usagi noticed Makoto's hurt expression, but once again, Ranma didn't. "No, he's not. We're off to see a movie. The new Spielburg film's out and Mamoru wants to go see it." But then Usagi was bursting with curiousity. "How are you walking around, let alone standing up? You nearly got killed yesterday! You should be one huge bruise!"  
  
Ranma gave Usagi a sideways look, to make sure she was serious. Finding she was, he shrugged. "Thick skin, I guess," he said. "Hey, if I can bust giant rocks an' get slammed through walls without nothin' wrong with me, why can't I take a few punches like piledrivers?" He wiped his hands on his loose black pants, and slipped the wrench into a pocket, where it seemed to disappear.  
  
Usagi was about to ask more questions, but Ranma held his hands up. "Hey! I did that for Sailor Saturn. She's a nice girl, you know? Not the first time I've helped destroy that school or the Tendo house... damn... now I gotta pay for damages again..." his voice trailed off, and he stalked out of the kitchen. The way his fists were bunched, Usagi imagined he was going to hit something. She turned to the other senshi, determined to try to get that hurt expression off Makoto's face.  
  
"Hey, Mako-chan, you doing anything today?"  
  
Makoto's eyes lifted to meet Usagi's, and Usagi could see that Makoto realised she knew how she felt. But even Usagi knew that by now, everyone should have given up on Ranma, if they were ever interested. He only had eyes for Hotaru. And Usagi had decided a while back to keep an eye on the diminutive senshi of death and rebirth, make sure she was all right. Rei could handle her feelings by herself. Minako found someone to replace her occasional fantasies on an almost daily basis. Ami was still hanging out for Keitaro. Mitsuki... Mitsuki was a mystery. No one had yet learned much about the eldest of the assembled senshi. But now she added Makoto to the list of people to watch for problems with Ranma.  
  
Before Makoto could answer, though, Ami said something very un-Ami-like, under her breath. Eyes swung around to lock onto her, finding her staring with something like horror at her computer.  
  
"Ami?" Usagi asked.  
  
"Everyone should read this." She turned her computer around so everyone could read the monitor. She was connected to the internet, checking sites she obviously had an interest in, and one of the open windows was currently showing Ebay.JP. One of the auctions of the day, listed right under the heading, was "IDENTITIES OF THE SAILOR SENSHI".  
  
Currently with twelve hours remaining on the auction, and the current value of it listed at 1 yen.  
  
Usagi sounded distant as she stared at the current bid. "I feel so insulted."  
  
******  
  
Yoshihiro drifted about his sanctum. Plans had been pulled awry, and that had forced him to rethink some of his short-range strategies. He hadn't believed he would have a senshi as a General of his forces for too long, since the knowledge imparted to him in his Dark Rebirth had contained several such fiascos. He didn't want another Prince Endymion or Dark Lady problem on his hands - even when evil, those senshi and their allies were annoyingly forces for the Moon Kingdom. Quite how, he never really could explain. Yet their lust for power and actions in trying to one-up the other existing Generals often brought Dark Kingdom forces down low, just when they needed to be strong. And besides, having a visible General - someone everyone was looking for - was definitely not a good thing when it came to trying to keep a low profile in draining energy.  
  
He glanced over at one wall of his sanctum, where Natsumi had been constructing him a huge bank of monitors. Perhaps he'd expended her too readily, to early in the piece. She'd have been a powerful General in the endgame, definitely. But Umiko had been jealous - still was, and wanted to know why the little bitch wasn't lying nameless, bloodless, in some gutter somewhere. But Yoshihiro had wanted Natsumi left alive. What she could still bring to his plans... well, he wouldn't know exactly what she'd done to Ranma until later. Much later, he knew. And he could see where things were going. Could see the patterns.  
  
Well, not him, but one of his Lesser monsters. A young man who's head had exploded, erupted into mere probability theory. At any one moment, all the threads of possible reality danced around him like flickering projections of someone's fevered imagination. Utilising this boy's ability, it was possible to bring the present future along a pre-set course. It was also possible to see much of what was happening now.  
  
But for now, he'd wished that he'd at least held onto Natsumi for another few days. Maybe even an hour or two. He had the omputer hooked up to the internet, but no CNN-Japan, and no cartoon channels. Best he had was a fuzzy black and white TV set that ahd obviously seen better days, trying desperately to reach in between the Dark Kingdom and the Earth Kingdom to pull in local Tokyo television stations. It was better than nothing.  
  
Least occasionally there was something on the net.  
  
He glanced at the monitor, wandered over to it. Clicked with the mouse on the "Favourite" icon, scrolled down his list of favourite websites, found the one he was looking for, and clicked on it. Ebay.JP flashed up on the screen. And the first of the auctions listed on the frontpage was...  
  
Yoshihiro sucked in a breath.  
  
"IDENTITIES OF THE SAILOR SENSHI."  
  
He had to have them. Knowing one of them wasn't like knowing the others. He'd taken a guess, thanks to Hotaru hanging around that Ranma, and guessed correctly.  
  
Sometimes, being an evil all-knowing monster General was merely appearance. If you took a guess and were right, then it reinforced that appearance. If you guessed wrong, well, you just killed the witnesses and hey, problem solved. Yoshihiro stared at the auction, clicked on it to see how much the latest bid was. If it was too high, he wouldn't be able to even make a bid on it.  
  
He trembled when the current bid flashed up. 120 yen.  
  
Yoshihiro dug through the pockets of his suit, and found 130 yen, two buttons and some lint. He quickly tapped in the 130 yen.  
  
******  
  
"We're being beaten already!" Rei yelled. "This is great! Anyone else have any money?"  
  
"I need to buy my lunch at the movies today," Usagi grumbled.  
  
"Grow up, Usagi, this is serious!" Rei yelled again. The cats, free of their boxes and sitting on the kitchen table next to the computer, nodded in unison.  
  
"But it's a daaaate!" Usagi wailed.  
  
Ami was quickly counting small currency on the table. "I can add in another 60 yen," she said, dubiously.  
  
Makoto shook her head. "Man, you guys are so weak! Do any of you have money?"  
  
"Don't you?" Rei countered.  
  
******  
  
A half-hour passed. Yoshihiro updated the site page yet again, and found the current bid was now sitting at 360 yen. Hmm. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, and checked an ashtray that Umitake used when at the computer. Deep under the mountain of ash sitting on top was another 400 yen. Which gave him a grand total of 530. Just enough to beat these other bidders.  
  
He entered the amount, then stood, and left the room. Evil needed plotting.  
  
Besides, sitting at the computer for hours on end hitting the refresh ubtton every few minutes was driving him crazy.  
  
******  
  
"Luna, do you have another couple of hundred yen?"  
  
The black cat shook her head. "Really. What do you girls do with your money?"  
  
"I pay for my tuition and board with mine," Ami said, helpfully.  
  
Rei shook her head. "I've given up everything I've got. Even my bus fare for tomorrow. Grandpa might give me some more money later in the week," she added dubiously. "But that won't help us now."  
  
"Surely if we put on a show for him... I can't believe I just said that," Minako muttered almost to herself. Rei eyed her curiously, and more than a little worried. "I think I've got some money upstairs." She bolted from the room, long blond hair trailing behind.  
  
"Come on! Give it... up!" With a final grunt, Makoto gave up on trying to pry Usagi's purse from her fingers. She might as well have been a mountain of granite for all the use the effort had done. "Don't you want to stop people from finding out who we are?"  
  
"Someone already knows!" Usagi shot back. "And that's not stopping me from going on my date!"  
  
The door pushed open slowly, quietly.   
  
"I haven't seen Mamoru in... in ages! And we couldn't do anything while he was here last time, and -"  
  
"Couldn't DO anything? You kept up your wing of the dorm!" Makoto shot back.  
  
A pair of purplish eyes peered in, taking in the commotion.  
  
"So don't you go telling me you couldn't do anything! Anyway, this is more important than your stupid love-life!"  
  
A hand reached in through the door and deposited something on a nearby counter, then withdrew, and the door swung shut.  
  
"Ouch! What was that for? Just because *you're* single and I'm *not*!"  
  
"Usagi! Makoto! Anyone'd think you're a pair of cats!" Mitsuki stopped, glanced at Luna and Artemis. "Uh... no offence."  
  
"None taken," Luna asid. Artemis lowered his eyes.  
  
"Does anyone have any more money?" he asked.  
  
Mitsuki reached out, swiped money off the counter. "Here's some."  
  
"Where'd that come from?" Makoto demanded. "That wasn't there a moment ago."  
  
"Maybe you put it there because of your guilty conscience!" Usagi grumbled.  
  
"MY guilty conscience! You're the one holding out on us!"  
  
"Leggo my ear!"  
  
Mitsuki tuned them out as she turned to Ami and Rei. "Looks to be about 20,000 yen."  
  
Ami stared. "Who had that kind of money lying about?"  
  
Mitsuki shrugged. "Not my place to say." She shot a glance at Usagi. Usagi, preoccupied with disentangling her hair from Makoto's clutching fingers, missed it completely. Luna didn't.  
  
"Perhaps I should go for a walk," she suggested.  
  
"Good idea," Mitsuki nodded. "And I'll bang some heads here together. Keep it quiet for your... walk." Luna nodded, and flicked out the kitchen doorway .  
  
"Hey," Mitsuki said, leaning in over Ami's shoulder and checking the laptop's monitor, "that's not showing up as 20,360 yen."  
  
"No, and hopefully it won't," Ami said in reply. "The auction system of the site will take that as our maximum bid, and will update it as people make bids that are lower than that. When they get higher, we need to have more money."  
  
"You think we'll need a lot more money?" Mitsuki said.  
  
Ami nodded. "A lot more, I would say. Too many enemies that we just don't know about. Too many enemies who'd do anything to find out who we are, to hit us when we're unawares. Too many enemies -"  
  
"With nothing better to do with their time?"  
  
"Um... yes. Those kinds of enemies."  
  
******  
  
Damn. Everytime Yoshihiro updated his bid, someone else automatically outbid him. It was someone with the user name of ByTheSea, and whomever he or she was, they wanted the identities of the Sailor Senshi at least as much as he did. Why, he didn't know. There seemed to be no other hint of Dark Kindgom power in the world today... although he was catching the occasional wiff of it, especially recently. There was something... something in the air... something familiar... he'd smelt it before... a long time ago... but he couldn't make the connection.  
  
He sighed, looked once more at the newly updated high bid. 20,000 yen. He had his monsters turning their pockets out, looking for any loose change they had. He'd organised one raid in Tokyo that'd gone somewhat awry and ended up in a kindergarten. Energy was gained, but not a lot. Children usually don't generate much energy of any sort, and they're almost as broke as university students. So Yoshihiro had managed to get the monies from the school's safe, but that had only brought his grand total up to a whole 19,990 yen.  
  
So seriously not good.  
  
He stroked his chin once more. He could try robbing a bank or something, but that wouldn't necessarily mean he could get back in time to make a new bid. And however much money he did retreive from Earth, there's no way he could know what the existing maximum bid ByTheSea had made. Damnation. He felt like hitting something. Hurting something.  
  
Where was a puppy when a little boy needed one?  
  
He sighed, covered his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. He checked how long he had left on the auction. A few minutes. Oh, damn it all. He could always get the money together after the final bid.  
  
He typed in 1,000,000 yen and hit enter.  
  
******  
  
Ami yelled another un-Ami-like word from the kitchen. Assorted senshi and animals burst into the kitchen, expecting to see some kind of multiple-monster invasion of the pantry, but were instead treated to Ami's horrified face peernig up from behind the laptop.  
  
"What is it, Ami?" Artemis asked.  
  
"What's the matter?"  
  
Ami swivled the laptop around, let everyone see for themselves. 1,000,000 yen. They couldn't match that bid. This was it. All over.  
  
Ranma walked into the kitchen, saw the screen. "Hey, what kinda game's that?" he asked.  
  
"It's not a game, Ranma," Ami explained, her voice a little shakey and scratchy. She gave a quick explanation of how the site worked, and what functions it provided.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I saw Nabiki checking this thing out occasionally. So, what's the problem?"  
  
"Problem?" Usagi asked, looking a little banged up and upset. Ranma guessed her date had fallen through for some reason. Makoto similarly looked as if she'd been training by having rocks thrown at her or something. He also noticed both her and Usagi were standing the furtherest apart in the room. "What makes you think there's a problem?"  
  
"'Identities of the Sailor Senshi?'" Ranma asked. "I'd guess that'd be some kind of major problem. Who's running the bid? You know his name?"  
  
Ami shook her head. "No. We only know his or her screen name. RichSoAndSo."  
  
"You're kidding," Ranma chuckled. "Hey, look out." He pushed Ami out of the way of the keyboard, and stretched his brain back to one of Nabiki's harebrained money-making schemes. He hesitantly tapped in a name to log in as, thought for a few more minutes.  
  
"What are you doing?" Minako exploded. "We've only got a few minutes before the end of the auction!"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, shut up a minute and lemme remember. It's been a while."  
  
"A while?" Ami asked.  
  
"Yeah. Nabiki set an account up for me during school. She was selling pictures of me on this internet thing then and pretended to be me selling them. To make it look legit, like I was getting the money for some charity so she could get some big payoff for her favourite charity, she had me get into it one time. So I gotta remember what I did to get in."  
  
"Just log in as us. Use us." Mitsuki stopped. "But we don't have the kind of money we'd need to top that amount."  
  
"Yeah, yas don't. Far as I know." Ranma cracked his knuckles, typed in a password. Went to the auction, stared at the amount of money, and sighed. "Damn. Thought I was gonna get to keep that... ah well... Hotaru'll thank me later, I'm sure." He typed something in, and waited.  
  
A minute later, Usagi couldn't wait anymore. "Aren't you going to hit enter?"  
  
"Nah... not just yet," Ranma responded, checking a clock. Nearly time.  
  
He hit enter.  
  
******  
  
Yoshihiro hit refresh a moment later. The server hadn't updated yet, and he got the highest bid title still. A few minutes later, though, he frowned. Perhaps someone had made a bid right on the cutoff point. After all, didn't that happen from time to time? People waited until the last second to make some exorbitantly high bid to make sure they won their auction without other people having a chance to respond? He hit refresh, expecting to see ByTheSea to have more money posted.  
  
But no. It was RedHairedGirl that had made the winning bid. Of 1,500,000 yen.  
  
Curses. Time to fall back on plan B.  
  
******  
  
The wind whipped around Makoto's ankles, and she wished she'd worn something a little warmer than a thin pair of coloured stockings. Her miniskirt wasn't offering much in the way of protection, either, and as autumn slowly faded and winter approached, she had to start dressing for the weather. It would start snowing any time soon.  
  
Beside her stood Ami, looking around for whomever was making this drop-off. Whomever had known their identities. Ranma was hanging back, leaning against a wall, backpack slung over his shoulder. Her shoulder, Makoto had to remember. Ranma had been splashed on the way here, and wasn't very happy about that fact. His... her clothes hung on her much lighter frame, and she looked as if she'd been shrunk down to a child.  
  
A figure appeared in the distance, black, approaching with a slow, trudging pace. It got closer, but Makoto still couldn't make out any details. As the figure got even closer, Makoto realised that was because RichSoAndSo was wearing a thick trenchcoat, a fedora hat pulled down tight over its head. The figure stopped, a few metres from Makoto and Ami.  
  
Ranma pushed off from the wall, and called out, "Yo, Nabiki! C'mon, you knew I was gonna pay for the damages."  
  
Makoto and Ami turned from Ranma to the new arrival, who reached up and pulled off the hat. "Dammit, Ranma, we couldn't wait forever for the money. Winter's coming."  
  
"The fence was only destroyed yesterday! Gimme a chance to get the money, why don't cha?"  
  
"You've got the 1.5 mil yen?"  
  
Ranma hefted the sack. "I checked around. That's how much it'll cost to get it restored. And now I'm even broker, if that's possible."  
  
"You can always move back."  
  
"You know I can't. Even if I wanted to, Kasumi wouldn't have it. You know that."  
  
"Yeah. I do." Nabiki sighed. "Oh, hey, I thought it was only going to be three of you."  
  
"Yeah. It is."  
  
"Hey!" Makoto demanded. "You said you wouldn't use our identities to make money!"  
  
"Hey, I needed some. A one-time offer. I knew Ranma'd find out about it and do something. He always does."  
  
"Nabiki, what'd you mean about the three of us?"  
  
Nabiki pointed over Ranma's shoulder. Ranma turned.  
  
"Oh. It's you."  
  
Yoshihiro nodded at the envelope that had appeared in Nabiki's hand. "I want that."  
  
"How'd you find us?" Ranma asked.  
  
"I have my ways," Yoshihiro shrugged. "You know - digital monsters can be a pretty useful thing to have under one's control. Although I so wish you hadn't removed Natsumi from the equation so early in the piece."  
  
Ranma's hackles rose. "What happened to her was her own choosing - and as I recall, what you pushed her into."  
  
"Well, there is that..."  
  
"So, you've come to dirty your hands this time?"  
  
"No. I wanted that package... but now... I see I no longer need it."  
  
"Why's that?" Makoto asked, trying not to sound too hopeful or downcast.  
  
"Because... he's here." Yoshihiro pointed at Ranma and smiled. "One such as you will go far. I only wish you could see you as I can see you now. Why I didn't see it before, I don't know."  
  
"Is that a threat?" Ranma asked, lowering himself into a fighting stance.  
  
"No. It's just a comment. Because, you know, you could have killed Mistress Saturn so easily. But I'm looking for a replacement for Natsumi. If you feel like you could take her place... please. Come see me. I'm sure the senshi can open you a portal to my world." Then Yoshihiro turned, started walking, and faded away in a tangle of black lines of nothingness.  
  
Ranma was confused, and wasn't the only one. "Was that a job offer?" Makoto asked, wonderingly.  
  
"I think you'd get a better benefits package with him than you're getting now, Ranma," Nabiki commented dryly. Ranma handed her the backpack. "It's all in here? Good. Then I'm off home. My ankles are starting to get cold." She turned to go, but stopped when she felt Ranma's hand grabbing at her arm. Not hard, not soft, just... taking it as a friend would.  
  
"Nabiki. Say hi to Akane for me, would ya?" he asked. It was a light tone, nothing serious. And yet, it was a sign he wasn't leaving them completely. Nabiki decided she could work this to her advantage at some later point, promised she'd do just that, and left the empty park.  
  
Ranma looked back at where Yoshihiro had disappeared, and thought hard.  
  
"He really just offered you a job, didn't he?" Makoto asked. Ranma just nodded. "You thinking of taking it?" Ranma held up the envelope in front of Makoto and Ami. Waved it about.  
  
"See this? Right now, it's the most powerful thing in the world. It can kill you guys, or keep you safe. Which my proxy, makes me the strongest man in the world. I hold the fate of the future in these fingers. My decision now... will affect countless destinies. What I do... will make alliances with dark forces and block out the light. Because there'll be no goin' back. Once I make this decision, Makoto, Ami, one way or the other, I kill you all. You're not strong enough to fight Yoshihiro. *I'M* not strong enough ta fight him. So what do I do? Give him the names and let him kill you quickly. Or... not kill you at all and let him kill you slowly. Which is the more preferrable?"  
  
"Ranma -" Ami started, but the papers of the envelope and its contents bursting into flame in Ranma's hand was enough to silence her. Ranma's female eyes bored into hers from the other side of the fire, looking more intense than usual. Hard, like granite. Cold, like marble.  
  
"There's a third choice, though, one I made a long time ago and which I'm gonna see through now. Ami, you wake Usagi up first thing in the morning.  
  
"School's gonna be in."  
  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Another chapter finished! Woo. Short, too. Started a new fic in the past few weeks - Saikano/Evangelion: Love Song of Tomorrow. I'm gonna say it here, because I guess people read this fic series more than X-Com: don't go read Love Song if you haven't seen the end of Saikano, because it has major spoilers. It starts at the very end of the TV series, and continues into Evangelion - and as Saikano is an awesome series, I don't want to spoil it for anyone and don't want to be accused of ruining an awesomely depressing series for anyone else (I was in such a funk for 3 days after seeing the last few episodes of that show, I'm surprised I made it without doing some major harm to myself or my relationships with others).  
  
Anyways. This chapter came about as a bit of a joke, since I've known a couple of the people who've tried to sell weird things on ebay, like their soul, the soul of their guitars, the meaning of life, touches from god, etc, and wondered what would happen if Nabiki did what she'd most likely be wanting to do with such juicy information. I mean, come on, who didn't see that one coming two chapters back?  
  
Okay, me, I admit she was going to remain virtuous this one time.  
  
But anyway, I digress.  
  
Next time: Luna's talk. I mean, walk. Walk. And the morning after the morning after. 


	12. Love 12

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 12  
  
** Small Beginnings Lead To Big Endings **  
  
  
Luna saw a shadow flit down the hallway, and duck into Hotaru's room. The girl was quick, much quicker than she let on, and the door shut before even Luna's feline speed could get her to the door. Behind her, in the kitchen, she could hear things go quiet as Mitsuki and Ami discussed bids on this internet auction site. Perhaps things were calming down in there. And then Usagi exploded yet again over her date.  
  
And here Luna thought she'd grown up. Some things were more important than occasional bouts of romance and sex.  
  
And this whole thing about their identities being revealed... well... Luna was worried.  
  
She could hear Ranma about, moving in his room, tidying up by the sounds of things. Or looking for something.  
  
But that didn't help solve the fact that Hotaru's door was still shut. She pressed an ear to the door, and could hear a wooden wind chime Hotaru had on her window frame, tinkling in the breeze outside. So that meant the window was open. Luna zapped outside and headed around the side of the dorm before Hotaru could think about shutting that.  
  
She leapt up onto the sill, and peered inside. "Hotaru?"  
  
Luna could make out a figure, sitting in the darkened room, on the bed folded into herself. She stepped into the room, found a place to sit at Hotaru's feet on the bed, and merely sat and waited.  
  
After a time, Hotaru's hand reached out, nuzzled Luna under her chin. "No matter what Ranma says... I was bad," she said.  
  
"Ranma forgave you. And you know Usagi and the others do, too."  
  
"I know. And I... I like that they all forgave me, Luna, but I did bad things. And I can't forget it. And I can't allow myself to forgive me."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Ranma doesn't understand... he... he doesn't feel guilt like I do."  
  
"Guilt's normal in this situation. You did bad things, but you weren't responsible for them. Remember that." Luna turned her cheek so Hotaru could stroke her other side. "You've been possessed before. You know that you're not responsible for what other people do to you."  
  
"But I didn't stop him! All I had to do was listen to Ranma -"  
  
"Child, did he tell you that the man who took you over was an evil person?"  
  
"Not... in so many words, no, but he warned me to stay away from him." Hotaru would have sobbed right about now, Luna thought, but instead the young woman sighed and pulled her hand back. "And I didn't listen to the hint."  
  
"He does seem to think people should understand him," Luna remarked.  
  
"I think... that's because mostly we do. And I don't think that's happened to him before. He's done a lot of growing up from the guy we first met."  
  
"That's true," Luna replied. "But you still can't be expected to understand his cryptic comments."  
  
"He's my sempai! And my sensei! I *should* be listening to those parts of him, damnit," Hotaru looked away as the chime made another sound. "He says its okay, and I think the other senshi'll forgive me and accept this has happened again... but I... I really hurt him, I think, even if he doesn't let on about it, and I think I need to be this way. For now. Until I've been... punished somehow."  
  
Luna looked up sharply. "How do you mean, 'punished'?"  
  
"I don't know," Hotaru sighed again. "Maybe, I don't know. Break up with him. Or making him lunches for work. Or... I don't really know what I can do to make it up. It's hard. I hurt him and I can't think of anything else but how that felt, sitting inside myself and watching him shrink back from me."  
  
"He didn't do much shrinking," Luna remarked idly, somewhat impressed.  
  
"I know him a bit better than you, Luna, he was pulling back."  
  
A pause while Luna cleaned her tail, thinking of Hotaru's predicament. Then: "You're not thinking of getting hurt yourself, are you?"  
  
"It might be punishment enough to get beaten up, but I can heal myself." She shrugs. "That'd mean I either had to not heal myself, or not get hurt. And physical pain only goes so far towards making up for what I've caused."  
  
"A tough decision," Luna commented dryly. "Have you thought about just being yourself and trusting to Ranma to deal with the situation?"  
  
"That works with us senshi. We know what we're getting into. Ranma doesn't know what he's gotten into, doesn't know the history of the Moon Kingdom or Dark Kingdom or anything, doesn't know about anything bar what we've told him. And if I've been reticent about telling him certain things about my life... I'm guessing none of the others have been exactly forward." Hotaru gave Luna a pointed glance. "And then there's his whole cat-phobia thing that stops you or Artemis talkiong to him, naturally..."  
  
"Naturally," Luna repeated. "I think he's getting suspicious of the whole talking boxes thing, too," she added wryly.  
  
Hotaru shot Luna a suffering look from the corner of her eyes. "I'm serious."  
  
"Strangely enough, so am I." Luna laid a paw on Hotaru's hand. "Trust in him. Don't alienate him. Let him work through whatever problems he may have, but let him work out what to do. Don't jump in half-cocked, ready to make what could be a disasterous decision."  
  
"I won't," Hotaru promised. And she didn't even have her fingers crossed behind her back.  
  
Luna flicked her tail, stood, then leapt out the window again.  
  
******  
  
Later that night, Ranma opened the door, and trudged inside, Ami and Makoto following. The other girls, minus Hotaru, sat arranged around the room. Usagi was in a mood, pouting still over her aborted date. She had a mobile phone resting on her stomach as she watched television with one eye, the door with the other.  
  
Far as she knew, Ranma didn't know about her and Ami being senshi, and she wanted to keep it that way.  
  
Ranma walked past, then dropped a hand on her shoulder. Bright and early tomorrow, princess," he said. "I want to see you outside in something you can train in at dawn."  
  
"What?" Usagi spluttered. She glanced at Ami, who shrugged. "Princess?"  
  
"Uh?" Ranma asked, turning back. Usagi saw he'd merely used the term because of her occasional attitude towards him, and not because he knew anything particular. So she relaxed. "Yeah. Training, tomorrow. You, Ami, everyone else. Dawn. Transformed, too," he added, almost as an afterthought. He turned again and wandered into his room, the door shutting behind him.  
  
Mitsuki cocked an eyebrow at Ami. "Must have been an interesting night. It's a shame I missed it. I think."  
  
Ami shook her head. "You didn't miss much."  
  
"It was that Nabiki woman, from Nerima," Makoto added. "She was selling our identities for money to repair the walls and rooms Hotaru and Ranma totalled."  
  
"She was what?" Usagi asked, horrified. "She promised she wouldn't -"  
  
Ami shook her head. "What's done is done. She thought Ranma would find out about it and pay the money himself... I think. I can't say for sure what was happening. But Ranma had obviously expected something like that, because he'd had the money ready, everything."  
  
Usagi's eyes shifed to Ranma's closed door. "Does he know everything?"  
  
Ami shook her head. "A bright young man, smart as well, and he sees a lot that even I miss - but he can be slow on the uptake. I think he's never really had to use his head much before, apart from surviving in a fight."  
  
"And we've seen how good his survival instincts are," Mitsuki witted from her corner. "Remember how he dodged Usagi's last batch of cookies? That's more than a learned skill, that's pure instinct."  
  
"What?" Usagi shrieked, turning around on Mitsuki. "That's the last time I give you any of my cooking!"  
  
"I chipped teeth! What did you put into those cookies?"  
  
"Girls!" Rei said, in a calm, quiet tone that brooked no argument. "Let's have a nice quiet discussion, shall we? Ami, does he know... about you and -"  
  
"Usagi? Yes. I don't know how, we haven't given him any evidence or anything that would penetrate our... our masks."  
  
"So then how -"  
  
"I don't know." Ami sighed. It had been weighing on her mind all night, too. While she didn't exactly mind, it did brook some questions, like were their masks breaking down? Would others soon recognise the women in their transformed forms? Were their powers weakening? Or had something happened to Ranma?  
  
"What do you suggest?" Usagi asked.  
  
Ami gave her a tired look. "I suggest we go to bed, get some sleep. We need to be up before dawn."  
  
Usagi's howl of anguish and despair echoed through the dorm's corridors.  
  
******  
  
But, just before the sun rose above the distant ocean, glittering off the jewel of the horizon that was Tokyo's central business district, the door to the Ai Sou opened and Usagi trudged out. Her eyes were open far enough to stop her from doing any damage from walking into objects or off cliff faces, but not much further. Ranma had his back turned to the assembled girls, but could feel Usagi join them. It wasn't that she was particularly noisy, Ranma was just, for the first time in a long time, trying to become the martial artist he'd always thought he was.  
  
Lack of intelligence, arrogance, ignorance, for now these would have to go by the wayside. He had students to teach, and if he taught them wrong... they could die.  
  
The fact they could die anyway didn't really occur to him at this point: a speeding car is just as fatal as a bakusai tenketsu'd katchu tenshin amaguriken in a volcano.  
  
He'd done some growing up since he'd been here, that was true. Being away from the constant bickering, fighting and backstabbing rampant in Nerima had been good. And his recent trip back had confirmed to him he had done the right thing. He'd have had to have left at one point or another; and regardless of how much he loved Akane, Ranma really did NOT want to become like his father.  
  
He loved his mother dearly, but Genma's personality around his mother was embarrassing. Understandable, but embarrassing. Ranma didn't want to marry someone only to live in fear for his life, he wanted someone he could grow old with, someone he could raise children with, teach them martial arts, and... and maybe have a garden. Somewhere he could relax outside of practising in the dojo he'd build.  
  
It was these thoughts of the future that occupied Ranma's mind for the moment. He waited until Usagi had taken her place next to Makoto, hesitantly. When he turned around, his students were standing loosely at attention. He gave a bow, held it for a second, then straightened. The others reciprocated, then also moved into the more casual attentive stance.  
  
"We have two new students this morning," Ranma started. "I promised a while ago that I would train you all, and train you well. We have many dangerous monsters to face, and physically, I'm not as strong as you women. But I am more skilled, and I think that's what's letting me stay at your side. If you could learn even some of my techniques, with your power, we should have no problem stopping these monsters."  
  
He clasped his hands behind his back, and started pacing a little. "For the next few days, I'll be concentrating on Usagi and Ami, bringing them up to speed. But I'll also be pairing each up with one of my more senior students: Rei, you'll take Usagi, Makoto, you'll take Ami. Your old sparring partners can spar with each other for now. In addition to learning techniques and moves, which we'll do for a good hour first with our warm-up, we'll also be continuing with our sparring. And by the end of the week, I'll split the sparring teams up again. My aim is to shift you around to each other every few days, so you'll get experience with a wide range of fighting styles, as you all find what form of attack and defence suits you personally."  
  
Rei's hand went up. "Sensei? Will we be training with weapons?"  
  
Ranma nodded. "Once I'm satisfied with your hand-to-hand skills, I'll begin training each of you with weapons. At first, a wide selection." He stopped pacing for a moment, turned to face Rei fully. "I want to see what each of ya has in ya first before we make a final choice on what yas use."  
  
Hotaru, at the back, making herself small and unnoticed next to Mitsuki, smiled slightly at Ranma's accent. He'd been at great pains lately to stop using slang so much, but was slipping whenever he was stressed. Obviously, the thought of some of the senshi armed with weapons worried Ranma. She also guessed a padded suit wouldn't help him much from some of the strikes he might catch in that training.  
  
But he was talking again, and she returned her attention to his words. "This morning, I want all but Usagi and Ami to take a run to warm up. Meet back here in ten, go through your second set of stretches, and begin your katas. I'll show you guys a few moves, and you can practise those while I work with Usagi and Ami some more. Go!"  
  
Ranma clapped his hands together, and the training session started.  
  
Amiw asn't hard to teach: while Ranma saw she wouldn't be a strong attacker, she had more of a stregnth in defence and direction. While Usagi might be the leader of the senshi, he reflected, Ami was definitely the brains. Usagi, on the other hand, was fairly average. She wasn't the klutz it was so obvious she'd once been, but even so, her moves lacked confidence and strength, both very important elements in martial arts of any kind. Ranma walked around her as he showed her stances, moving arms and legs and shifting her body and head around to get her into the right posture. Once she had it, she could return to it easily enough, but there would be a pause while she tried to recall what was to be her next move. It was almost painful watching her decide whether she should punch, kick or block; the only thing worse was that she flinched whenever a punch came at her.  
  
Ami watched Usagi's mistakes: Ranma taught Ami by teaching Usagi. Ami watched, waited, and imitated as she could beside the two as they sparred in slow motion. At least, Ranma thought to himself, Usagi wasn't going to be as much of a problem as he'd thought she would be.  
  
They sparred in slow motion for a while longer, and once the other senshi came back and began sparring, Usagi slowly got better.  
  
******  
  
The next few days saw quiet in Japan. No monsters, no big crimes, nothing happening down in Nerima. Ranma took advantage of the quietness, and trained the senshi as hard as he could without breaking them. By Sunday, Ranma had Usagi not flinching at punches, and moving somewhat faster. Ami routinely worked with Hotaru or Makoto, bringing up her speed and confidence as fast as she could. Usagi's speed had improved, but Ranma found her confidence was still lacking. Not one for physical combat, Ranma knew, Usagi was out of her element here. She was the heart and soul of the team, the mother figure that the others looked up to. The senshi-proper, as Ranma thought of them, were the soldiers, Usagi was the queen.  
  
And queen's didn't sully their hands with the dirty work.  
  
It was difficult, but Ranma had a sense of urgency about this. Something was... coming. Almost like... a sense of power growing behind his eyes. And something pulling him somewhere. He couldn't explain it any better than that.  
  
A sense of impending doom did wonders with his training sessions.  
  
******  
  
And on Monday, the sense of impending doom changed from footsteps in a distant corridor to a raging bull.  
  
******  
  
The day started off fine enough. Ranma had taken to helping Makoto fixing lunches for everyone's day - since they were now training longer, Makoto had less time to get lunches and breakfasts ready, so Ranma helped out where he could.  
  
He wasn't anything good in the kitchen, Makoto had reflected early on in this arrangement, but then his food was edible, unlike some others she could name.  
  
But Monday morning, Mitsuki was also in the room, perched on the benches opposite the sink and main bench, where Makoto and Ranma cut lunches, boiled rice and folded sashimi slices into packs. She kicked her legs back and forth occasionally, head cocked, watching. Ranma looked out the window in front of him at the dark clouds in the distance. "I think it's going to snow today," he remarked, conversationally.  
  
Mitsuki continued to stare and kick her feet about. Finally, Makoto could take it no more, turned and let the older senshi have it.  
  
Mitsuki continued to flick her legs at the knees, waited until Makoto had finished as Ranma kept working on the lunch packs, and then said, "I'm waiting to get into the cupboard. I need my pills."  
  
"Don't you have them in your room?"  
  
"I'm alllll out. And, shush, shush! And I've got more in the cupboard over there, with the headache pills and sinus tablets and stuff."  
  
Ranma was standing in front of the cupboard, and didn't notice Mitsuki's finger pointing at him. She flicked up off the bench and headed over towards him. A hand went either side of his hips, and Ranma's eyes opened wide with sudden shock.  
  
"What?" he yelped, nearly jumping straight up.  
  
Mitsuki leaned in close to his ear. ""Relax, Ranma, I'm just getting something down..." She shifted him to the side, and opened the cupboard. She crouched down and looked up at him with a playful smile on her lips. "Here," she finished. She grabbed her pill bottle, and headed out of the kitchen, tossing a "Bye bye!" over her shoulder as she left for the lounge. Makoto glared after her retreating form, arms folded.  
  
"That girl just pisses me off!"  
  
Ranma shrugged. "She's had a hard life."  
  
"That excuses everything?"  
  
"No. But it's udnerstandable why she's the way she is if you look at it that way."  
  
"She's a fllll..." Makoto started to say, then trailed off, realising suddenly that Ranma really hadn't noticed. Mitsuki was flirting with him. This wasn't the only time, either - she'd been competing with Hotaru earlier on for Ranma's affection, and it looked like she hadn't yet admitted the game was over.  
  
"A what, Makoto?" Ranma asked, distractedly.  
  
"Nothing," she finished, looking away, feeling saddened somewhat. It seemed a lot of the senshi had a thing for Ranma, in some respect. With Makoto, she was impressed with his strength and fighting skill. Rei... wel, Makoto really didn't know what was going through Rei's mind, but she guessed it was something to do with the sheltered life of a shrine maiden. Ami's eyes were elsewhere - although elsewhere wasn't single anymore. Usagi still had Mamoru, who she'd rarely seen this last year. Hotaru felt something within Ranma that appealed to her greatly, and had stuck to him like glue when they'd arrived. Makoto just thought that perhaps that was the reason Ranma had fallen for her: she'd gone after him, not stopping for breath, not taking no for an answer until she got a yes. Makoto smiled, somewhat sadly.  
  
Minako was interested in Ranma because... well, because he still breathed.  
  
And Mitsuki just wanted Ranma for reasons of her own, but she did seem to know him previously. Ranma didn't make much of it, so Makoto didn't know if he remembered or not.  
  
He went back to working with lunches, and Makoto joined him. They were silent for a while, barring the occasional "Excuse me," or "Can you pass me...?". Until Makoto thought that she'd have to tell Ranma how she felt. She didn't want to break Hotaru and Ranma up, hell, she knew she wouldn't be able to come between them, but this was on her mind too much. She needed to tell him, to clear her head, get over him and move on. She opened her mouth, but the words that came out sounded nothing like "Ranma, I want to have your babies."  
  
No, it sounded more like "Ranma, Makoto, there's something on television! Hurry!"  
  
And weirdly enough, Makoto had just sounded exactly like Minako. Wow, cool, she could do impressions.  
  
Her body, like Ranma's, acted entirely on instinct and headed for the lounge to see what the problem was before her head caught up to the fact she hadn't told Ranma, and there likely wouldn't be another chance. Damn. Upon reaching the lounge, it was quite obvious as to why they'd been called. On the television, early morning game shows had been interupted by a news broadcast. Out in the bay right now, according to the studio anchor, whatever it was was heading for Tokyo. They cut to an on-the-spot reporter, Akira Tonomoto.  
  
"The swell of the ocean is getting larger, and soon we'll have to evacuate to higher ground. Tokyo Police are directing an evacuation of the central business district already, and have been wanting to move us on for some time now. Already, out to sea, you can see the bow wave created by this thing as it comes into shallower waters! And..." The camera, already shakey, got shakier as it lifted from the view of the reporter out to the sea. The water indeed was lifting.  
  
"What's going on?" Makoto asked.  
  
"Seismic and sonar readings have detected something large heading into Tokyo from the ocean," Ami replied, a towel around her neck as she'd been called from the bath a few minutes earlier.  
  
"I thought it was a cartoon," Mitsuki remarked from her couch.  
  
Akira continued as the camera showed the sea lifting up in the harbour. "The JSDF have been called in, and are vectoring home defence jets into the region, ready to launch an attack on whatever this thing is." he held a hand up to his earpiece. "And I've just been told the US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk is being redirected to approach in a gesture of support. The 13th Armoured... wait... what's happening?" Around Akira, the howl of warning sirens increased in intensity, and twin horns poked up from the water. Bow waves formed around them as they moved inwards towards the shore, around where Akira was standing, and judging by the reporter's voice, he realised they were headed directly for the jetty he was standing on.  
  
"Come on!" he screetched. He'd seen this movie before, and ran like nothing else on Earth. His cameraman followed behind, racing for the network's truck, parked at the edge of the jetty. About halfway down, the jetty started exploding into matchsticks, and the cameraman turned again, running backwards to film the oncoming wall of water and bone. Near the edge of the water, though, the jetty didn't just explode as it had been. It exploded up and out as something huge stood up underneath it.  
  
"Gojira!" someone yelled from the television, and Ranma had to admit the thing looked somewhat like the American version of the classic monster. But he saw on the television, and felt with his bones, something different.  
  
A Dark Kingdom monster. And it was huge.  
  
"My god," Ami said, a hand raising to her mouth, "It's headed for the city!"  
  
  
To be continued...  
  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Hmm. This one took a while. Forgot that I hadn't posted one of these in a while, and so finished it off today. A little short, but it launches into the second half of this arc, metaphorically speaking. We've finished the introspective parts (although they'll continue somewhat in the background) and back into the action, ramping up the power of the bad guys. Course, this guy's probably my big guns and I won't be able to deliver after this, but hey, that's the fun in writing :)  
  
Next chapter: c'mon, like you CAN'T guess? Lots of action. And lots of cameos and stuff. Come on, Tokyo's being destroyed!quite obvious 


	13. Love 13

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
Note: Thanks go to Pana for assistance with finding information on military vehicles and weapons for the opening sequence this chapter, as well as out-and-out giving me information :)  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 13  
  
** We Stand Together... **  
There was no doubt about it. The creature that exited the bay at Minato was massive, and it was hell-bent on destruction.  
  
The giant heaved itself up out of the water in the docks district, and headed inland on a north-north-west bearing. Directly for the centre of Tokyo city proper, where it could cause untold billions of yen in damage. People were lucky in that the first few buildings that the giant stepped through were uninhabited, derelict, slated for demolition. The very few homeless who had taken up residence there, and the occaisonal child skipping school, had plenty of time to vacate the premises.  
  
The next few, the inhabitants weren't so lucky. Giant monsters had long been thought abolished from Tokyo, and many people had simply forgotten how to deal with the addition of a new one to the city's population. In the late 50's and 60's, monsters had run rampant through these very streets, but most had been made extinct or relegated to theme parks like Monster Island off Hokkaido. Quick government checks had shown the forces that once could be gathered to fight creatures such as Gojira, Rodan or Mothra had suffered attrition to the point these forces were too deteriorated to fight even a baby Gojira.  
  
Which, obviously, wasn't good.  
  
Thankfully, the United States' 7th Fleet was stationed in Yokohama, and while the ships were undergoing a minor refit at the time, the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk was clear of obstructions, and the flight crews on hand. With less than twenty kilometres to the target, flight time was negligable and the F/A-18's were lining up their target almost as soon as they were airbourne. Multiple racks of AGM-65 Mavericks were launched, and quickly acquired their target: the monster rampaging as yet through the uninhabited docks region.  
  
Those who were still running and evacuating as the mighty giant smashed feet down around them, striding inland, saw and heard the missiles streak in for a scant second before they impacted and erupted into gouts of flame and smoke. Several missiles shot past and hit nearby buildings - which, thankfully, were empty.  
  
Those running from the area paused, turning and looking up as flaming wreckage fell from the skies onto the streets below. They raised arms and cheered, and the city was saved.  
  
Until the smoke cleared, and the giant monster still stood.  
  
In fact, it looked a little angry.  
  
Although the Super Hornets were still a number of kilometres away, and turning back for a second shot, the monster turned, faced them, then opened it's cavernous jaws. A blast of intense radiation exploded outwards along a coherant path, which detonated the first plane, then was swung around, tracking the other jets before they could fire again. Within a matter of seconds, the US aircraft were gone, melted and exploded from existance.  
  
Then, the creature turned again, and continued it's remorseless gait towards the centre of Tokyo, the only visible damage made by the jets' barrage of explosives a light column of smoke billowing from its back in the wind.  
  
******  
  
It was on a nearby building that the government observers reported the airstrikes had done no damage whatsoever. And in dim government emergency offices, officials discussed furiously what was next on the list.  
  
"We could always use a small tactical nuclear weapon," one man offered slowly and hesitatingly.  
  
There was shocked silence in the room, and horrified glares directed at the man. "What you suggest is unthinkable," the Prime Minister said, finally. "Nuclear weapons are not an option in an inhabited region."  
  
"It should be considered as a last resort effort. We cannot allow this creature to leave Tokyo," the junior official continued.  
  
"No. Japan has... other defenders." The Prime Minister leaned forward, steepling his fingers together. "I only hope they can reach us in time."  
  
******  
  
Some such defenders stood overlooking the monster themselves. Ranma. Sailor Moon. Sailor Mercury. Sailor Venus. Sailor Mars. Sailor Jupiter. Sailor Saturn, at the back. All on a rooftop, overlooking the monster and the government team now evacuating their position as the monster turned their way and moved closer. Ranma saw they wouldn't make it out of the building before the creature was upon them, and turned back to the senshi. "Can any of you's fly?"  
  
A lot of head shaking went on. "Damn," Ranma said, then punched out the window and leapt, springing out laterally to reach the other building's rooftop. He didn't see the senshi behind him exchange glances, then spring after him, but he could feel their presences as they followed. He'd have smiled, but the roof was coming up fast, and he had too much speed to make a decent landing.  
  
So he went for a controlled crash, rolled off his feet onto his shoulders, and continued rolling until he'd bled off some speed. Not being a magical person such as the senshi were, he had to rely on such old-fashioned techniques to stop. As he got to his feet, ignoring the pain as grazed skin pulled shut again, he noted that the senshi, while they might not be able to fly, certainly had some kind of powers of levitation, as they all landed gracefully. But he had no time to curse the fact he'd broken his own henshin wand, and instead threw open the door to the stairwell, jumping down flights at a time until he had caught up to the government agents hurrying down the stairs ahead of him. He grabbed one, threw open the door at the next landing, and shouted "Follow me!" before exiting through it and looking for a window facing an adjoining building not in the path of the oncoming monster. Damn. There were windows, but the next building was at least ten floors lower. Not so bad for him, but perhaps it would be serious for whomever he was carrying.  
  
He looked back, and realised the senshi were there, pairing off with other agents, ready to grab them as soon as Ranma grabbed his and showed them where to go: they'd picked up on his plan quickly, obviously, and suddenly there was a sound fro the stairwell of something huge coming through the wall at speed and then there was no time and Ranma grabbed his agent and went through the window watching the next rooftop coming up fast.  
  
An idea hit him halfway down, part of his memory, and he oriented himself so his feet were facing the oncoming rooftop before blasting out with his ki through his feet. Not quite useful for flight, Ranma remembered, and not any use in this manner for speed - but it would make landing much more comfortable. His feet touched down a moment or two after the senshi had landed, and he put the agents down. "Go, get outta here," he said, waving his arms. "We gotta think."  
  
Not Ranma's best attribute, but perhaps the senshi had seen something like this before, faced some giant rampaging monster -  
  
No. No, else he'd likely have heard of it. The only giant monsters Ranma could think of were the huge animals of Ryugenzawa he'd seen. A glance at the senshi showed him he thought right: most of the monsters they'd fought over the years had been human-sized, and a monster-sized creature with the abilities and strength this monster was displaying was obviously something they hadn't encountered before.  
  
Oh, there were the rumours from a few years before that a giant phoenix and dragon had battled it out in the CBD and that the defence forces had been called in, but as there had been no evidence of such an intrusion into the captial, it was assumed it was just massed hysteria.  
  
The monster continued through the building the senshi and Ranma had just leapt from, and all on the rooftop had to take cover from the exploding walls above. Cement chunks rained down, but more dangerous were the metal structural supports that protruded from the boulder-sized chunks of material. Ranma could take the hits, as could the women there, but not the government agents.  
  
Turning, Ranma gathered his agent, and leapt again for the next building, smashing in through a window a few floors down and managing once again to keep his passenger in one piece. Senshi followed behind him and through other windows. By now, the monster was moving onward, not paying them any attention, and Ranma gathered his students and left quickly as the agents struggled to catch up with the last twenty seconds.  
  
******  
  
Outside again, closer in towards the city's taller buildings, Ranma felt useless. He hadn't yet tried a frontal assault - and likely wouldn't, he knew. He'd fought one giant monster before, and knew how useless physical strength could be, much and all as he hated to admit it. The senshi were more capable at fighting this kind of adversary, and Ranma had noticed Sailor Mercury was already reviewing plans of attack and discarding them almost as immediately as they flashed up on her visor.  
  
Oh well, it was worth a shot. "Mercury, have you figured out how ta beat this thing yet?"  
  
Sailor Moon, a moment too late, tried, "Sailor Mercury, have you... damn." Too late. But rather than complain Ranma had asked what should have been her question, she turned from the young man to face her friend.  
  
Mercury shook her head. "I haven't yet been able to get a good reading on it - it's energy is all over the place!"  
  
"Anything you've figured out about it?" Sailor Moon shot in before Ranma could. She was rewarded with a slightly angry glare from him as they crested yet another roof's lip.  
  
"According to records from the Moon Kingdom, based on the energy output of the Dark Kingdom, this creature is dwarfing existing figures dramatically!"  
  
"What?" Ranma asked.  
  
Nemesis translated. "It's stronger than anything we've faced before."  
  
"Stronger than the combined fleets and armies of the Moon Kingdom," Mars added.  
  
"We're dooooomed," Sailor Moon wailed.  
  
Ranma's head snapped up and around, and he directed the course of transit towards Tokyo Tower. "We're not doomed yet," he said, with a bit of a smirk.  
  
******  
  
The view from the tower was staggering, and Tsubasa was too afraid to step right up to the window on the viewing level. Hikaru, though, her twin, was pressed right up against the glass, peering downwards. "DD! I can see your car from here!"  
  
"Hikaru! Come back from the window!" Tsubasa wasn't that sure about approaching the glass, considering what she could see approaching from the bay area. It had started out so far away, but it was close now and it looked massive, and was approaching much faster than Tsubasa would have enjoyed.  
  
The ten year old at the glass pouted. "But I've never been to Tokyo before! And... and I probably won't come back here again... so I want to see things!"  
  
"Hikaru, perhaps it would be best if you stepped back from the window," A man with light blue hair said in a tone that brooked no argument. Hikaru pouted more, but stepped back to hold hands with Tsubasa.  
  
"DD, you're no fun..."  
  
The rest of the observation deck had been evacuated a few minutes earlier, but DD, Tsubasa and Hikaru had stayed behind, hidden from the hurried checks by staff for stragglers. Tsubasa's father had left with the evacuated groups, and would no doubt be nervous now and worried for the safety of his daughter and Hikaru, his other 'daughter'. To be honest, Tsubasa was worried about him, too, but Hikaru and DD had held her hand and told her she could best help him by helping everyone else.  
  
She thought that was kind of true, from a certain point of view, but her courage, while enough to help Hikaru fight Magi spawn, wasn't up to the task of the oncoming monster that appeared to be headed directly for the tower, and she was starting to panic.  
  
The elevator doors swished open, and Tsubasa turned, half-hoping that the tower's staff had returned to double-check they had left no one behind, but no. It was a young man and some women, and while the man was dressed in some stylised Chinese outfit, the women were dressed in some really weird kind of stylised... Tsubasa didn't know. Almost like a school uniform, but much more stylised. Hikaru, of course, was excited to see more people, who's attention, in turn, was concentrated on the behemoth.  
  
Tsubasa didn't really want to look at the creature, but there wasn't much of a choice - there was something about it that kept drawing one's gaze to the thing, an almost magnetic pull. Huge, it was, scaled, bipedal with a forward leaning stance. It looked like a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex Tsubasa had seen in books. It was much larger, though, and the head was larger, boxier, the mouth large enough to swallow a dump truck or two without needing to chew. And still it came.  
  
Hikaru was saying something to the new arrivals when the elevator pinged again. A pair of young women stepped out, one dressed in a black-and-white diamond-patterned jester's outfit with a staff, the other with a digital camera, looking this way and that. Tsubasa almost missed the yellow stuffed animal sitting on the jester's shoulder, until it shifted back and glanced at her, frowning. Behind them walked an angel, sniffing with some distain as he took in the people present on the observation deck. Scowling even more, and blushing fit to burst, was a young man behind them, face buried in his ceremonial robes whenever he thought he didn't need to look where he was going. As soon as he cleared the elevator doors, they shut with a ding, and dropped back down towards ground level: someone else had called for it.  
  
Tsubasa didn't understand why all these people were turning up on a conscious level. But subconsciously, she knew they'd been drawn here for the same reasons she had: drawn to power, drawn to help. There was something about this place that brought people here, a reason for this gathering of power. But not knowing it consciously, it wasn't something Tsubasa could think about. And even if she had realised this, she simply wouldn't know the answer. These monsters were nothing like the Magi she had fought.  
  
They frightened her. They were immensely strong, super fast, and were proving to be a global danger in the extreme as they took hold on their new "adopted" planet. But what scared Tsubasa about this oncoming monster... it was bigger, yes. It was slower, though. And possibly a lot weaker, she didn't know. She knew next to nothing about it, and she wouldn't have access to any of the "hard" data Hikaru had on it until they joined... but Tsubasa knew.  
  
Hikaru was afraid. She could see that now. The twin peered at everything with an excited expression... but lurking behind that was doubt. A gathering of power, she openly realised now, as she watched the teddy bear turn into a winged lion with a slightly whining, pouting voice as he complained of hunger. And yet, Hikaru still acted... afraid. As she would right before grabbing Tsubasa and telling Tsubasa to concentrate, to let Hikaru protect her...  
  
The scowling young man with black hair and a long ponytail glared out of a window. The women behind him muttered amongst themselves, more visibly worried than he, glancing out occasionally, also sweeping the odd eye over the growing crowd on the observation level of the tower.  
  
"It's so undignified, riding to save the world in an elevator," a blond with twin pigtails streaming back from her head muttered to her friends.  
  
Another, in red, sighed. "If you'd only turned into Neo Serenity back at the hospital, none of this would have happened."  
  
"Don't be so sure of that," one dressed in green added. "We're not pushovers, and what Ranma lacks in strength, he makes up for in skill... and he's frightened of the guy."  
  
"He's not frightened," a girl, shorter than the rest and standing slightly separated from her companions, interjected into the conversation. "He's worried. There's a big difference."  
  
"That being?" asked the one in green.  
  
"That he thinks it's unwise... to face Yoshihiro right now, as compared to not facing him at all."  
  
"Well, he's not a coward," a girl in blue with a visor murmured.  
  
"Hmph," a black-clad member of the group shook her head and turned away, preparing to down a pair of pills. As she tipped her head back, the man reached out and stopped her. She looked embarrassed, tried to continue on to swallow her pills, but he stopped her again. "Hey, Ranma, you know, uh, how I get without -"  
  
"I do." Ranma, the man, nodded out the window at the monster. Tsubasa noted it was much closer now. "And I know how dulled your movements get, how much weaker you become. Can you hold it together long enough to...?"  
  
She wouldn't meet his eyes. Tsubasa guessed soemthing bad had happened between the two of them relating to these pills. Of course, this was Tokyo, and there was every chance that this woman was a drug addict... even superheroes had to have bad qualities, Tsubasa guessed. "You know I can hold it together for a while without them, Ranma. It's just hard -" She broke off and looked away from her feet, accidentaly straight into Tsubasa's eyes. She searched them for something, the force of her personality, her pain and anguish, held the older woman in place.  
  
She apparently found it, because she drew herself up, looked into Ranma's eyes. "It's just very hard... to go back on them when I've been off... when I'm quiet for so long... when I don't, when... when I don't see and hear things... I think I'm cured. I have, before, and I've stopped taking my medication, and that's how... that's how..." Her voice faltered, and she looked away again. The girls behind her had continued talking, but the short one in purple had taken a sad interest in what was going on with Ranma and the older woman, and was almost nodding to herself. "Get me... to take them right after, okay?"  
  
That was all Ranma wanted to hear. He touched her elbow as he passed back towards the window, and she stiffened, like shocked with an electric charge before placing her pills back into a pocket Tsubasa couldn't see. She turned around then, left her gorup, and headed for Tsubasa.  
  
When she reached Tsubasa, the older women squatted down in front of her, to look into her eyes. They were very pleasant, Tsubasa found. A warm, rich purple, in a face framed by long violet hair. She didn't look angry, or frightening, or embarrassed, or concerned now, just curious. "So... what are you doing here?" she asked. "It's not exactly the place for little girls at the moment."  
  
Tsubasa pointed at Hikaru, who was gazing up in adoration at one of the woman's friends. "I'm with... her. And him," she added, pointing at DD, who was entertaining the winged lion for the moment.  
  
"It's not safe here, you know," the older woman continued.  
  
"I know," Tsubasa nodded.  
  
"Shouldn't you and your family get to safety?"  
  
"Isn't this the safest place in Tokyo at the moment?"  
  
The woman grinned a little on the wry side. "That it could be." She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Not now," before turning back to Tsubasa. "But you should get your family to evacuate, all the same."  
  
"Oh, they're not my family."  
  
"But -" The woman turned to look at Hikaru. "She's your twin. Isn't she?"  
  
"Kind of." Tsubasa noted Hikaru was bouncing back across the floor towards them, holding out a hand for her friend to grab.  
  
"It's time, Tsubasa-chan!" she called out as she arrived, smiling happily at the older woman talking to Tsubasa. Tsubasa took her outstretched hand, and dissolved in a green glow, resolving into a woman the height of the senshi before her, coloured in muted purples and greys. She nodded at the senshi, and stepped towards DD.  
  
******  
  
"Great," Nemesis muttered to herself as the twins combined into an adult, obviously super-powered, form. "Can I be nice to anyone today without having it thrown in my face?"  
  
"You know," Kozuma breathed, leaning from behind her, in close over her shoulder, "you didn't have to be nice to Ranma."  
  
Nemesis turned away from him. "You know I need my medication. It's not good for me - ME! - to be off it."  
  
"You've been off it for a while before, what's the difference now?"  
  
She shrugged, kept her gaze away from him. "My head - my mind - is mine. And when I'm not taking my medication, it becomes someone else's."  
  
"Like Kari's."  
  
Now Nemesis shuddered, wrapped her hands around her shoulders trying to hide herself. "Don't even mention her. She's... she's not nice."  
  
"In a lot of ways, she's better than Mitsuki ever was. Poor little Mitsuki. Did she think she's the only person to have lost a parent?" Kozuma smirked; Nemesis could hear it in his voice. His breathing raised fine hair across her shoulders. Kozuma, the seducer. She knew what he wanted - the control he directed - and the chaos he would create. And he knew how to make her lose control. Losing control didn't bode well for those in her immediate location. Usually.  
  
"Yeah. Perhaps now would be a good time to lose control...?" he asked, a hand stroking around the side of her stomach, fondling her navel. She pulled away, moved further from the groups of heroes still assembling in the main elevator lounge. Kozuma followed her, hands running electric chills up and down her spine. A door closed behind him, and his hand gripped her firmly, pressing her up against the wall, lips on her collarbone. "Poor child... so very sad what happened to Megumi... are you sure he's all right? What about the kid? Poor little kid... it's always the young ones who get hurt..."  
  
"Shut up!" Nemesis whispered fiercely, through tears that had appeared from nowhere.  
  
"That poor girl. Thirteen, and still not in high school. She'll soon become... well, you know... one of THOSE people, down in the docks district..." Kozuma's voice trailed on, the tone seductively sweet, contrasting the content of his words. His seductions were intended for others; his stabbing, biting words were intended only for her.  
  
"Shut uuuup!" But the tone was more plaintive now, Nemesis was weakening. She could feel it. She'd waited too long to take her medication today, and the enhanced hormones that swept through her as a senshi pushed all control provided by them away. She was being led down a very dark road. She could feel it, feel the others crowding her. Glancing up, she saw them. Some concerned, like Shin-chan and Tetsuya-kun. Others indifferent - Maho, Omiko, Shuuji, Ami. And those eager for her to slip up, to leave the motor running, as it were - Taki, Moyo, Suu-chan, Kusanagi-kun. And Kari. Nemesis couldn't forget Kari, with her burning eyes, and hateful distain of everything Mitsuki Matsuda. She stood at the rear of the group, arms folded, shooting daggers of flaming bile from her eyes. Kozuma was behind her again, hands stroking at her hips, at her breasts, along an arm, drawing it out further ad further from her body. Nemesis tried to draw it in again, cover herself, push Kozuma away.  
  
And found her hands no longer obeyed her command.  
  
She sobbed. "What is it with you all?" she cried as she sank through Kozuma's arms to the floor. "Why do you hate me so? Aren't you here to protect me?"  
  
Kari pushed through the crowd, bent down to peer directly into Nemesis' eyes. Her eyes were a slightly darker shade of purple than Nemesis', and promised much fun, much danger. Much destruction. "But Mitsuki, dear," she cooed, falsely pouring light and compassion into the words, "we ARE here to protect you. You're a danger to yourself. You're a problem. We," she gestured back at the others, "are much more worthy of running your life. We, not you, have gotten you where you are today. You... you ran away. You made us to face life for you... and now you don't want us? Tsk tsk, little one, life isn't that easy."  
  
"We outnumber you," Kozuma added.  
  
"She's the original," Shin mentioned from the background. "We're just figments. Incorrect brain chemistry. Shattered fragments of a persona smashed when her mother died." She shook her head. "We're nothing special. We're not deserving. We are all her."  
  
"Lies. Lies and deception. But what would we expect from you?" Kari rounded on Shin, the only person with glasses in the room, and neatly-tied back violet hair. "Intelligence. The aspect least able to make decisions. Because intelligence alone has no emotive worth, no capabilities to problem-solve, no method of attaching importance to data. You're just a walking memory."  
  
Tetsuya stepped forward, to stand between Kari and Shin. "Leave her alone. You wanna pick on someone, Kari, you try me."  
  
"Oh, I don't fall for protectiveness, Tetsuya," Kari smirked. "That's useless, too. I'm the most important, most relevant aspect to our lives here - aggression. Without me, we'd have all died prematurely. I'm raw, I'm naked, I take what I want and I care little about what gets in our way..."  
  
"And yet you won't touch me?"  
  
"Protectiveness... the will to shield others from harm... it's a useless concept, and beneath my notice." Kari turned back to Nemesis, who was now huddled on the floor. Then glanced at the door - footsteps! Someone was coming. She glared up at Kozuma again, who bent down and whispered in Nemesis' ear.  
  
******  
  
Ranma opened the door to the storage area, and found Nemesis dusting off her skirt, standing around peevishly. She glared up at him, and he saw something flit across her face - something he wouldn't identify. She walked up to him, trailed a hand across his chest as she passed. "Is it time yet?" she asked.  
  
"Uh... yeah. It's only two blocks away now."  
  
"Cool." Nemesis continued past, and rejoined the senshi.  
  
Ranma shook his head. That wasn't lust in her eyes. Couldn't be. They'd dated - once; well, double-dated, really - but that didn't mean anything from Ranma, and she had cooled off a lot. But he thought he'd hear talking, or sobbing from this room, and nothing. No one else was in there. Everyone who was coming seemed to be assembled, although he was surprised this 'Tuxedo Kamen' character Sailor Moon was waiting for apparently hadn't showed up yet, and so it looked like time to get underway. He closed the door, and walked back towards the senshi. The feeling was in the air already; it was just a matter of who was going to make the first move.  
  
No one wanted to leave the perceived safety of the tower, though, and so Ranma guessed he, the one with NO super powers, would be the first to launch an attack...  
  
******  
  
Sailor Moon glanced at Nemesis as she rejoined them at the window and smiled. The older senshi looked set for action, which was good in a way. Neptune and Uranus hadn't shown up, neither had Tuxedo Kamen, and Sailor Moon was worried. Something didn't look quite right with Nemesis, though. Her hair looked ruffled, but that wasn't it. Nemesis glanced sideways at Sailor Moon and smirked.  
  
"Let's get this show on the road," she said.  
  
It was the eyes, Sailor Moon realised. Sailor Nemesis' eyes were wrong.  
  
And then she jumped through the plate-glass window and all hell broke loose.  
  
******  
  
The monster saw the tower. Its target. Close now, so close. It heaved itself forward, stepping agily around a small multi-storied building as it continued forward. But that was slow, so the creature reached out, grasped the lip of the building in front of it, and hauled itself up.  
  
******  
  
A helicopter for Japan Today swung around one of the taller buildings in the city's heart as the monster steadied itself on the top of the building. Surprisingly, the ediface didn't collapse; it crumbled, but held firm for the moment. The cameraman, Kenji Morioka, leaned out of the door with his camera, the active light a steady red light above the lens. A pair of loosened straps held him in while beside him, the reporter who he'd been assigned to stood at the open door, no safety straps holding her in as she clutched a microphone in one hand, a roofstrap in the other.  
  
Jun Yamamoto shouted into her microphone to be heard over the incessant beat of the rotors above her. "Climbed to the top of the Koga building, but still heading for Tokyo Tower... the American carrier fleet at Yokohama has failed to injure the monster and has taken heavy losses. Estimated casualties at the moment are in the hundreds, with more found wounded or dead in the monster's path every minute now it has reached a crowded region of the city."  
  
Morioka panned the camera down to take in the streets of fleeing people, pushing past one another without regard for any other's safety. A car beeped its horn before blasting into the street, knocking people down in the driver's mad rush to flee before the monster could turn their way. When he panned back up, he saw they were much closer to the monster now, coming in from the rear. Yamamoto was continuing to yell about the fleeing population, how hundreds of thousands were still being evacuated from the area, as the creature brought its tail around and smashed through another building.  
  
The helicopter lurched as shrapnel peppered the outer skin of the vehicle, and although both in the passenger compartment were reasonably unaffected, the pilot wasn't so lucky. He slumped dead over his controls, and the chopper tilted downwards, headed for another building. Morioka caught sight of something spilling from a shattered window in the tower, but the falling craft disappeared too quickly behind a building before he could make out what it was.  
  
"We're going to die!" Yamamoto screeched into the microphone, knocked off her feet and slamming into the front of the passenger bay. Morioka was only thrown to the limits of his straps, which he tightened in the off-chance he survived the initial impact. A moment later, and he swore he could see a dozen roses shot past the door, heading under the helicopter, and a scant instant after that, the helicopter stopped falling.  
  
In fact, it started bouncing.  
  
A shadow at the door made Morioka turn: a man in a tuxedo with an old-fashioned top hat and cane stood there, a mask pulled across his eyes. "Fear not, for you are not yet dead. But evacuate this area, as it won't be safe for much longer." Morioka nodded, but the man was already gone, leaping off with a whiff of rose-scent in the air.  
  
Yamamoto moaned, what looked like a broken arm dangling at an angle completely wrong back into the pilot's cabin, and spoke into her microphone. "Jun Yamamoto, Japan Today, signing off."  
  
******  
  
Nemesis didn't see the helicopter go down, nor did she really care, but she was the cause of it.  
  
Bursting from the tower, she had pushed off with enough force to produce a mini-sonic boom behind her, and she smashed into the monster with both arms outstretched, elbows slightly bent so they would give rather than snap on contact, and she sank deep into the beast's hide.  
  
Yet it wasn't enough. She didn't penetrate the deeply-lined flesh with the force of the blow, it was only enough to annoy it: a bruise formed even as the beast roared, waved its head, and then slammed its tail around in anger. A building shattered, sending more debris down on the fleeing people in the streets below, but Nemesis didn't care much about that, either. She bounced back from the creature's hide, landed on a nearby rooftop, and flung up her hands. "Nemesis Arctic Fire!" The energy that spilled from her palms coruscated over the creature, and it roared again in pain and annoyance, and this time swung it's head around so it could fix one baleful eye on the senshi. She stared back, hate and bile filling the space between them. It opened it's mouth to growl -  
  
- and blasted Nemesis with a powerspike she couldn't avoid. She smashed through three buildings behind her, hit the fourth, and slid slowly to the ground.  
  
Ranma took charge of the senshi's efforts for the moment, as the shock of Nemesis' actions cleared. "Sailor Saturn! Go help Nemesis. Sailor Moon, get your... your troops and follow me." Ranma leapt from the tower for battle, and Sailor Moon wrapped her fingers tighter around her scepter and followed. The senshi followed behind without a word.  
  
As if the senshi were rats leaving a sinking ship, the others assembled joined in the exodus, making for the battle to save Tokyo.  
  
Events around the creature became mildly chaotic, as attacks flared past allies to strike at the beast, and the beast struck and bit back.  
  
Every so often, there would come a lull in the noise as one side or the other rested momentarily to reassess the situation. The look the beast got into its eyes told Ranma there was something more going on here than a random, mindless monster - the fact this one was unknown to anyone suggested a lot to him, and it wasn't just a normal monster... Sailor Mercury ahd said its energy was definitely Dark Kingdom and was greater than any monster faced before... stronger than the Dark Kingdom had been during the time of the Moon Kingdom. So, was this a small monster Yoshihiro had found somewhere and altered?  
  
In one of those lulls, Ranma remembered something. It hit him like a bolt of lightning between the eyes.  
  
******  
  
The skeleton. Around for a while, stronger than the monsters previous. Tohkar had also been stronger than the dragon they'd faced. Mercury had theorised that the longer a monster from this brood had existed, the more powerful it became. Natsumi had been insanely strong. And Yoshihiro... Ranma didn't even want to go there.  
  
******  
  
So this monster... was one of the originals. Tohkar had slowly been losing the power of speech, and this monster apparently had none, so was that a trend in Yoshihiro's kin? Did they get stupider as they grew older? Perhaps. It didn't seem to need to announce its attacks - definitely an advantage over most of the people assembled here to fight, Ranma thought dryly to himself.  
  
"Big Card! Make me as strong as this monster! BIG!"  
  
Movement captured Ranma's eye, and he watched a young girl dressed as a jester grow to the size of the monster. She was armed with a staff of some kind, and swung it around into the beast's jaw. It staggered backwards with the force of the impact, which also shattered nearby windows, creating a cascade of glittering glass shards that dropped onto the fleeing people in the streets, and as the beast moved back to strike again, she swung the staff the other way, smashing into the monster's chest. That threw it to the other side, but it caught on a building, grabbed that, and used it to swing around, stiffening its tail behind it.  
  
The tail smacked into the girl, and she was thrown backwards into a building of her own, where she disappeared from sight again. Not good. Probably the most concentrated magical force since... well, since the Gods created Japan... and it was incapable of stopping a single monster.  
  
The beast stood up, threw back its head, and roared. More windows shattered, hands were clapped to ears, and nearby eardrums burst. Ranma found himself momentarily deafened, but instead watched Mercury and Venus shout attacks, and launch chains and ice at the beast's leg, obviously trying to tie him down. Didn't work. The monster lifted its leg and took part of the street with it. Bending its head again, it launched another oral powerspike. Mercury and Venus dodged, but not by much, and the shockwave from the blast picked them up and threw them like ragdolls. It roared again as the senshi bounced off the street and rolled into a brick wall before turning its attention on a purple and grey woman who danced about it, attempting to stab into it.  
  
No luck. A vicious backhand from the creature sent the woman into the ground. Ranma thought he caught a green glow for a moment, but turned his attention to Saturn, visible two blocks away, working on Nemesis. The older woman was sitting upright again, at least, holding her head. Ranma didn't quite know what had happened with her, but hoped it wasn't related to him asking her to stop her medication for the moment. He feared it was, though, and so shifted his gaze back to Sailor Moon, swinging her crescent wand around, but the healing lights did nothing but irritate the monster. It stamped a foot near her, and she panicked, running.  
  
A man in a black tuxedo and top hat danced around behind and above her, tossing razor-sharp roses at the monster to cover her retreat. Tuxedo Kamen, Ranma guessed.  
  
So what now? The fight was falling apart. Ranma wasn't the kind of person who could lead... his students, yes, but that was different. He was incapable of directing a large-scale offensive, of the kind that was needed here, especially without knowing what everyone was capable of. Knowing that someone could be made big would have been a help, at least.  
  
He watched, proud as a teacher, as Mars combined her more violent powered attacks with combination kicks and punches he'd shown her in the last few days. Nothing like battle experience to finetune them; concentrating her magical energies at the same time she focussed her physical abilities was increasing the power of both, something Ranma had been hoping. Jupiter was also doing the same, picking up from Mars as they fought, each trying to cover the holes one would leave in their defence as they made an assault. He thought it strange that, as yet, the senshi had really only relied on magical prowess... while Jupiter and Mars had been somewhat competant fighters for average people, he'd have expected them all to be some kind of super-human martial artists... but they hadn't been. Up until his training, in physical combat, apart from Jupiter and Mars, and lately Nemesis, they were useless.  
  
But it wasn't enough. His strength wasn't enough to bring any kind of hurt to this monster, and Ranma knew that, but the forces of good were still being forced back, towards the tower. Instead of fighting, he bounced around, helping people get clear, trying to take out some of the big debris before it could kill innocents on the ground, checking on the combatants and making sure none were severely injured.  
  
The beast stretched and roared again, and lightning blasted down from a clear blue sky, striking the beast's back and coruscating down in a cascade of blinding bluish-white light. Ranma cursed and averted his eyes, bringing an arm up to cover them when that proved not enough -  
  
- and was slammed into a wall.  
  
Fearing the beast had caught him, he brought his fists up to strike back at faster-than-sound speeds, but then he realised this monster had breasts and a hot breath that almost seared his cheek as it panted on him. "Sempai! Stay out of the way! You nearly got killed!"  
  
"H... Saturn?"  
  
"Yes, sempai." Ranma's vision hadn't returned properly, but he could see blurs moving about, and the black-haired blur in front of him turned around, looking out through the wall, embarrassed but not pulling back from being wrapped around him just yet. "The lightning... it blinded almost everyone out there. And it did that fire-breath thing at you. Nemesis was really badly hurt, but she's okay now... so she says... and I saw that thing go to hit you."  
  
"Why? Why me? I'm not strong enough to fight that thing, let alone hurt it..."  
  
"This doesn't sound like you, sempai... what's wrong?"  
  
Ranma shook his head. "I've grown up a lot, Sailor Saturn, and part of that growing up... I'll fight. And I'll fight ta win. I don't think we CAN win at the moment, but somethin'll show up, somethin'll happen. But for now, I wanna try and get these people out of the way. I... when you were bad, I watched you revel in destroying a school with people trapped inside... an' they're people who were used to the big fights between me and Kuno, Ryoga, Shampoo, Akane..." He sighed, unconsciously, before continuing. "But these are just normal people, and can't take what we take. And..."  
  
"Have you thought, maybe, that you could help them better by trying to stop this monster now?" Saturn asked, slowly. She peeled herself off his body, stepped back to give them each a little room. "That stopping it now, or holding it up from moving any further, would save a lot more people?" There was a roar outside, and the increased heat from a powerspike nearby. Ranma, through the hole in the wall, watched magical fires blast the street below. There wasn't even time for the evacuating people to scream out in pain, let alone horror. Saturn turned to face the scene as well. It wasn't pretty.  
  
"Saturn..." Ranma's eyes never left the road below, letting the horror of it sink in completely. "No. I can't let that happen. I think..." He fell silent.  
  
But Saturn could guess. He'd almost been wiped out trying to fight a single monster once before, and since then, apart from fighting her in Nerima, he hadn't had a good, decent workout and was beginning to doubt he had what it takes anymore. Especially when in terms of magical powers and strength, these monsters were stronger than him. But that bravery was one of the things she loved about him so much... that he would willingly throw himself into the fray for those he cared about. He'd done it for her, for Nemesis, even apparently for that ex-fiance of his on a number of occasions. While he still seemed self-centred, and Saturn thought he would always seem that way to people, he helped out a lot, helped others a lot, just made it look like he was doing it for himself.  
  
But sometimes he needed a boost.  
  
And while Saturn didn't feel terribly good about being this close to her... well, to her boyfriend, especially after recent events, she had to give him something, shake him from this inaction. She'd been watching him in the tower, and he'd been psyching himself up to make the first move... had he done that, he'd likely have joined in by now already. But Nemesis had charged in - and Ranma had watched her get almost splashed across the ground. Not the best thing to see happen to a magically near-invulnerable woman, and consider what would happen to you as a very mortal - albeit very strong - man.  
  
What to give him? That was easy. She closed her eyes, stood up on tiptoes, and kissed his lips. Briefly, she couldn't afford to allow herself to feel too happy doing this, but it lasted long enough for Ranma's hands to find their way to her shoulders. Then she broke apart, looked away. "Sempai... you know why I can't be more... open with you at the moment. But... we need your help." And then, before his hands could bring her back, she leapt from the hole in the wall out once more into the fight.  
  
Ranma paused a moment, feeling butterflies in his stomach, as he looked down at the road. Usually... in Nerima... if he'd faced anything like this, he'd have run. Maybe trained until he could beat it, but he'd have ran all the same. But now? Now there were some six to eight million people in the region, all possibly about to be killed. Ranma couldn't stop the monster himself. But maybe if he helped the others...  
  
Another powerspike that evaporated, melted and charred over a thousand people to death made his mind up. Ranma climbed out of the building, leapt for the one opposite, then bounced back, working his way up to where the monster was.  
  
******  
  
Nemesis stood shakily on a building opposite from the monster, gathering energy, gathering strength, biding time. While the others danced around and fired off spectacularly useless attacks, Nemesis focussed on bringing strength from all over herself, drawing it into her chest, ready for release. And she kept building.  
  
Kari didn't like losing. Kari hated even more being hit. This monster was going to pay.  
  
Nemesis kept drawing on herself.  
  
******  
  
Yue and Kerberos fired arrow and flame at the beast, but nothing stopped it. At best, the assembled forces had slowed it considerably, by creating a massive distraction. Since the first senshi had leapt from the tower, it had moved only two footsteps closer to the tower, it's obvious target.  
  
They paused, watching as a young black-haired man burst from the base of the building it stood on, firing energy blasts at it. They did nothing but make it a bit angrier than it had been, and it fired another powerspike down at the ground in the man's general direction.  
  
He dodged to one side, bouncing back to the building opposite, continuing to work his way up to the level everyone else was on. As he touched on a wall, he sprang off again, at the same time firing off an energy blast or two. The constant rain of energy irritated the beast, and it turned again, sending a powerspike at the point where the young man was next to bounce from. It missed him, but he lost his footing, and tumbled, and before he could grab something, begin his climb up again, the beast fired another blast into the building, and it started to collapse.  
  
The man saw this, and tried to dodge, but didn't have time. Several large chunks of concrete seemingly exploded before they reached him, and Yue's and Kerkeros' magical senses let them keep up with his movements, as fast as they were, but then more and more chunks fell, each larger than the one previous, and the dust that fell with the chunks, as well as the dust the chucks got blasted into, began blocking the young man's vision. When the real big pieces started hitting him, he couldn't prepare for them, only react once they'd passed. And they were dragging him down.  
  
The dust cleared for a moment, and Yue watched a huge chunk smash the young man in the back of the head. He fell, then, limp, unconscious. Just before the huge pile of rocks covered him up, possibly for good, Yue caught sight of something leaping at him, female, a touch of black in her costume.  
  
And then the final rocks fell, and Yue saw them no more.  
  
While Kerberos would have liked to have saved them... Yue didn't tell him they could possibly still be alive. That would distract the other Guardian Beast from his duty - to save everyone else in Tokyo - and could have disastrous results. So, Yue kept silent, and returned his attention to the beast at hand.  
  
******  
  
In the netherworld sewers, Yoshihiro smiled at Umiko as he heard the report. "Yamazaki says the martial artist Ranma is down."  
  
"That's certainly good news," Umiko smirked as she cleaned her cheeks with the back of her hands. "Can your plans proceed again, then?"  
  
"Yes," Yoshihiro mused. "Of course, it's not that he's a threat now. Soon, maybe. But not now." He paused, looked into the portal in his mind that Yamazaki was transmitting. "Not now. But I look forward to the challenge. For now, let's just watch Raijin cause some much-needed panic on his way to do my bidding."  
  
Umiko grunted, and continued cleaning herself.  
  
******  
  
And in the dark, stuffy darkness, Ranma Saotome slept...  
TO BE CONTINUED...  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Bah. Too long to write. But done now. And twice the length of what I took up writing when I started Truth... I did used to write much longer fics, but I found 25k to be about good for a semi-episodic feel that I could get out fairly regularly. Well, this is about 45k or so, and took some thinking as to how to sustain the story while extending the length of it and the like. Most chapters will likely be this long now, maybe the occasional filler a bit shorter, and thus, the series will also shorten considerably in terms of chapters - this would have ben 2, normally, the next 2, and a couple of the ones after this... also 2 or 3. As I was planning for the same 20-22 chapters I did for Truth, and this is technically 13/14... well, that brings it closer as I tighten the story up. Ah well. so that's explained. Anyone who reads my other fics, fear not: X-Com chapter 5 is progressing with a terror site in London, and Love Song of Tomorrow (SaiKano/Eva combination) chapter 3... is on the horizon somewhere ^^; But that's coming, too. Anyways, it's late, I'm heading to bed.  
  
Next chapter: ... Or We Fall Together. Ranma awakens, piled under a couple of thousand tonnes of building, with only a badly positioned senshi above him to keep everything up. The monster Raijin's plan is revealed - will anyone be alive in Tokyo to appreciate it, though? And a few more cameos that there weren't time for in this chapter... 


	14. Love 14

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
NOTE: This chapter has some bad langauge, adult themes, and sexual references. No sex, though.  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 14  
  
** ... Or We Fall Together **  
  
Yamazaki continued to watch from a distance. Extreme animalistic telescopic vision let him see the action, the carnage, as it progressed in downtown Tokyo, and it cheered him no end to see the people of the city burnt, vapourised, squished, and suffer many other interesting deaths. They'd beaten him too many times for him to care, insulted him, used him, abused him. He now only wanted to see them all dead.  
  
And dead they shortly would be, he knew. Raijin was a few steps short of his goal now, the Tokyo Tower. It was within his grasp. The only reason he hadn't reached out yet -  
  
- Raijin was having fun. Serious fun. The magical people of Tokyo and its surrounds were even now buzzing about his head like flies. Moments before, a giant girl in a jester's outfit had laid into Raijin with a funny-looking staff, but that hadn't done much to slow him down. He'd demolished a building, just seconds ago, and Yamazaki had caught sight of one of the senshi powering down into the rubble as it collapsed - he'd watched Ranma Saotome, Yoshihiro's current lead enemy, fall under the debris, so he guessed she was on her way to save him. It wouldn't do much, though; that was several thousand tonnes of concrete and steel, possibly much more than that.  
  
He reported to Yoshihiro, who paused, probably as he passed on the information to Umiko, before he felt his Master's eyes once more in his head, watching what he was watching.  
  
******  
  
Sailor Moon didn't spare much more than a moment glancing at where the building had just been standing. Another one down. No doubt Nemesis got to Ranma before he was covered, but there were other people down there. The ultimate hardhitters in the people assembled to fight this monster in sailor suits, and the senshi weren't having much luck. They were already two members down - five, if she counted the recently-absent Neptune, Uranus and Pluto - and with Ranma gone...  
  
She realised she'd been coming to rely on his leadership rather than her own - not a good sign in a future leader of people. So she did what she could to take over - raised her wand, pointed it at the monster, and yelled, "Hey, you!" An eyeball as large as a bus swivelled down to stare at her. "Yeah, you! I don't know what you're doing here, but I know you're evil, and this is MY home town... Dark Kingdom clown, give up now or prepare to be punished! For I am Sailor Moon, and -"  
  
It rumbled, deep in its throat, and for a moment, Sailor Moon didn't realise it had just spoken. "Indeed?" it had said. And in her surprise, she almost forgot to dodge the powerspike that lashed out towards her. The top of a building behind her exploded. More rubble falling to the streets below to create dangers for the fleeing civilians. Sailor Moon recovered her composure, and continued.   
  
"And in the name of truth, love and justice, we, the Pretty Sailor Soldiers, will punish you!" She pointed, but the grave impact of her words and tone was momentarily voided by the tip of the tail that caught her full in the chest. She'd have bounced further away if an angel hadn't caught her and delivered her to a nearby rooftop, where she regained her balance. The senshi gathered around her in a protective formation, firing off attacks at the monster.  
  
Powerful magics combined with focussed martial arts techniques warped the air between the senshi and the beast, and yes, it did indeed roar in pain and anger. And as the senshi renewed their attack, pushing for all they could against it, it swung around towards them.  
  
"Do you insignificant insects actually WANT to die?" it rumbled through a window-shaking roar. Blistering, coruscating energies rippled over the monster's hide, smouldering through scales. Damage, finally, blissful damage. Sailor Moon almost sagged to her knees, but she couldn't, no, not now. An injury to the creature would have to be capitalised on, regardless of the sharp stabbing, tearing pains in her chest. She'd heal. She'd just have to. But for the moment, she wasn't going to be doing much yelling or moving of her arms. Damn.  
  
The monster turned to face them, turning the injured flank away from the senshi. That move brought the injured site in the arcs of an emotionless woman in purple and grey, and with a flash, she leapt inwards, pummelling her fists into the creature's side, ichor spurting forth around her fists. She ignored the bolts of energy that coursed up her arms from the senshi's attacks, until they were too strong, too energetic many after-effects that snaked around her body, jolting her systems. She split apart into two small girls, both shocked into momentary unconsciousness, dropping towards the streets below. A man in a black suit and a top hat threw himself to their rescue, launching multiple roses through the air towards them. Lines trailed out below, and as roses hit nearby walls, they bounced back, the lines tangling into a mesh netting. The girls hit the netting, before Tuxedo Kamen grabbed them and leapt for safety as a wayward claw sliced through the wiring.  
  
"Is this the best you can do?" the monster snorted, regaining his composure. As the young girl in the jester costume, the monster's size again, charged from behind, he raked out backwards with his hindclaws, catching her across her stomach and tearing the denser costume material to shreds before they continued through soft flesh. She screamed, loud enough to break windows, before vanishing again to the streets below as she shrank.  
  
Sailor Moon leaned forward, cupping herself, trying to take the pressure off her chest. Then, Saturn was there, left hand on the elder senshi, and Sailor Moon felt her ribs shift inside, re-knit, and the pain in her lungs settle down. She straightened, and nodded a quick thanks at Saturn, who was twirling the Silence Glaive around in her right hand. It took Sailor Moon a moment to recognise one of the training patterns Ranma had taught her.  
  
"Shall we try again?" Saturn asked, eyes locked on the monster, as it presented its injured side again as it turned back from dispatching another group of heroes.  
  
Sailor Moon nodded. "Did you really think such a cowardly and simple attack would deter true justice from being dealt?" she yelled again, readying her wand. A rush of power through her hands indictaed it was ready to be used again. She gestured with the wand, just a slight raising of the tip, but that was enough for the senshi to understand to unload everything they had at the monster's injured point again. "Get ready to scatter," she muttered under her breath.  
  
"And then?" Mars queried.  
  
"I don't know, form up in our training pairs and try to beat the living shit out of it?" Sailor Moon opined. With that, she dropped the wand back down to the horizontal, and began the offensive anew.  
  
******  
  
Darkness.  
  
Dank.  
  
Dusty.  
  
They were just some of the 'D' words that sprang to Ranma's mind as he opened his eyes and took a shuddering breath. Returning to consciousness wasn't easy, especially after whatever wringer he'd just been put through, and he could feel injuries healing as he lay there, motionless. He tried to stretch, and found something on top of him, pressing down on him lightly. To his sides, one hand was trapped in rubble, and it felt like fingers were broken or sprained - either way, painful, immobile, and currently irretrievable. To the other, his hand encountered a lot of painful, pointed things. Like rubble. Painful rocks. Painful shafts of iron. Come to think of it, his back had things digging into it, as well. He shifted his free right hand as best he could, contorting in what little range of movement he had, to touch the back of his head.  
  
His fingers came away sticky. Blood. Yeah, he could smell that distinct coppery reek. So he was injured more. What happened, though? His head ached, he couldn't remember much for the moment, but it was coming back. The monster on television, the mad scramble to get from Kawagawa, Nemesis leaping out through the windows and starting the fight a little earlier than expected... the fight, the deaths. How many people had died in the streets already? Ranma had just watched thousands die in flame and molten death, charred beyond recognition as living creatures in a split second. And no doubt, the monster out there wanted to do that to the rest of Tokyo... he remembered his new determination, this would not be so, and he remembered the kiss.  
  
And he remembered, with a sharp, shooting pain through his head, the building falling on him.  
  
Oh.  
  
So he was stuck, alone, under some thousands of tonnes of rubble, with not enough room to move himself into a position he could perhaps safely escape from the debris. Damn.  
  
He tried to shift his legs, and found his body and legs wedged in pretty tightly, something soft and yet unyielding at the same time trapping him. And that was when he began to panic.  
  
It was his first few panted gasps, breathing in the free-floating dust, that set him coughing. His head spasmed, jerked upwards, and smashed into something. *That* was hard. Concrete?  
  
No. It shifted, and moaned. "Do you mind... not hitting me?"  
  
"Nemesis?"  
  
"No, Tetsuya. For the moment." Ranma's eyes had begun to adapt to the almost complete darkness, and he had to admit, there was something different about Nemesis' face. And her voice. Almost like it wasn't... oh heck.  
  
"You're not Mitsuki."  
  
Nemesis made to shake her head, but then her eyes darted to the side, noting what was resting on it. "Not for the moment. Mitsuki's..." Her voice altered further, changing from the warm, almost masculine tone it had been into a slightly nasally twang. "Havin' a rest," she completed.  
  
Personalities. And as Ranma could just make out Nemesis' face in the darkness, he watched expressions change fleetingly as one personality vied for dominance, then another, and so forth and so forth, until they settled down again.  
  
"Don't mind Taki," Tetsuya said again. "He's not dangerous. He wants as much control as the rest of the pantheon he supports, but is fairly harmless. Especially in a situation like this."  
  
"How... how deep are we down? Did you rescue me?"  
  
Tetsuya looked embarrassed. "Actually, 'I' didn't. Kari... Kari did."  
  
"Kari...?"  
  
"From the same side as Taki. Anger, hatred, intolerance. Aggression, basically."  
  
"Then... why did she save me?"  
  
Tetsuya's expression distorted, grew hard. His voice also altered considerably, becoming playful, loud, with an underlying current of maliciousness and manipulation. Nemesis' body shifted against Ranma, and suddenly he was aware of her skirt lying up on his stomach, bare naked legs surrounding his hips, tensing, gripping him in a manner Ranma suspected was anything angry at all.  
  
Agressive, yes, angry, no. A moment later, the soft thing above him, which he had realised was Nemesis' body, grow a pair of hard nubs, pushing into his chest. Ranma knew from experience those things only popped out if it was cold or something... stimulating was going on, and considering it was rather warm in the enclosed space...  
  
"If you want the answers to that question, don't you think you should ask the source?" Kari smirked.  
  
******  
  
A dozen blocks from Tokyo Tower, a train from the outlying prefectures pulled into a station, to take as many people as possible out of the immediate danger zone. But a few people ran out of the carriages, sprinting for height. And upon rising to the top of a tall building, they stopped and stared.  
  
"Oh my god," Ukyou gasped, hand raising involuntarily to her face. Ryoga's expression was set in stnoe, anger and irritation.  
  
"I've fought against things this big before," he muttered, before readying several bandanas and his umbrella. A quick equipment check showed they were okay. Ukyou took the hint and gave her spatulas a quick once-over.  
  
Beside them, Akane, Shampoo and Cologne stopped at the edge of the building, their mouths dropping open.  
  
"Aiyah! Great-grandmother ever see this before?"  
  
"No, Xian, I haven't," the matriach replied, trying to hide a lot of worry behind a mask of ponderings. "There is no record of such a thing happening to the tribe as well."  
  
Next to her, a small man with a bag of borrowed lingerie slung over his back appeared from nowhere, waving a backscratcher with his free hand. "Wah ha! With this item of power, I can liberate as many giant monsters in Tokyo?" he said, mixing sentences as he opened his eyes.  
  
Cologne didn't bother looking at him. "This is grave."  
  
"I will fight," Ryoga said, before stepping up to the lip of the building and leaping. Ukyou, too, climbed up and launched herself into space wordlessly.  
  
Shampoo gave her elder a worried look as she twirled her bonbori. "Great-grandmother?"  
  
"Go. Help. But be careful." Shampoo gave her another, even more worried look, before launching herself. Cologne turned to the old man, not really wanting to. "Happo, I think it time we put aside our differences again."  
  
"And fight that monster?" Happosai squeaked. He eyed Akane. "Maybe if a pretty young lady would go with me...?"  
  
"Out of the question, perverted old man!" Akane growled, stomping Happosai into the roof and flouncing back down the stairwell, looking to find a closer vantage point. Something like this, Ranma would no doubt be around. And they had to talk.  
  
Cologne shook her head. "I'll see my way to... giving you something of mi-"  
  
"Wow!" Happosai crowed, leaning almost off the edge of the building, peering into the fray. "There are young girls there, ensnaring such delicate beauties on their bodies against their will! I wonder if they'd be grateful enough to help out an old man if I helped them...?" And then he too was gone.  
  
Cologne sighed. The old fool had a one-track mind, and at least he hadn't heard her offer of her own underwear for his assistance. She hoped. She bounced towards the fight herself.  
  
******  
  
Above the city, a black slipgate opened, and Yoshihiro stepped into existance. Umiko stood beside him, Eyeing the ground far below. Yoshihiro had donned a cape, which swirled theatrically around them both. She shivered with the gusting winds around them, and allowed her altered form to slip through - with a fur coat, she'd be protected from the worst of it. Her Master, though, showed no such discomfort.  
  
Speaking of her Master, his attention was fixed far below, where a giant beast rampaged through Tokyo. "Raijin seems to be having fun," he remarked.  
  
"Is that all we came here to establish, Master?"  
  
Yoshihiro shook his head. "No. I am here... just to observe firsthand. While Yamazaki carries out another mission for me."  
  
"You didn't tell me he was being redeployed," Umiko said, aware she sounded childishly insulted as she spoke.  
  
"I don't go through you for everything, my dear," Yoshihiro replied, a hand idly finding its way behind Umiko's ear and scratching softly. She purred. "Yet it is important to everything we're planning."  
  
"The final offensive will begin as planned?"  
  
"Yes. And the future of the Dark Kindgom... will be assured."  
  
"Standing in the light instead of hiding in the dark?"  
  
"Exactly." Yoshihiro's hand shifted to the top of Umiko's head. She pressed into his legs, slipped a tail around his legs. "You really are becoming more like a cat every time you change. It is funny, considering how much like a lizard you were."  
  
Umiko shrugged. "I am what you need me to be, Master."  
  
"There is much truth in what you say, more perhaps than you know."  
  
"Natsumi's actions were planned by you, and ran to your timetable. I surmised much from that."  
  
"Perhaps." Yoshihiro watched as Raijin below repelled yet another attack by the assembled heroes, who's ranks seemed to be swelling even as he watched. Another half-dozen people joined in, unsure of what they were doing, outclassed by the magical abilities of those already here, but brave warriors nonetheless. Soldiers he would be glad to command. He watched as they spread out, began helping survivors of strikes on buildings, helping them to safety. He could have told them, saved them the trouble: shortly, when Raijin had had his fun, no place in Tokyo was going to be safe from the devastation he would unleash. "But knowing any potential trouble could be controlled if it was directed by me and my designs... is a lot different to a thinking, uncontrolled, rational being that does not willingly side with me. Natsumi.. was weak. Ripe for the picking. She only had to be coerced until such time as she realised what power she now held could wreak on those who had caused her much misery and pain. Then she was mine for the moulding."  
  
"She never knew. Yet I am much the same, Master. As her. I feel the stirrings of jealousy and ambition much as Natsumi Otohime did. Do you not feel any sense of danger from me?"  
  
Yoshihiro shook his head. "I feel no such threat from you. You... are mine."  
  
"As Sailor Saturn was?"  
  
He felt a thrill of suppressed anger. "She was not supposed to be mine for long. Longer than she was, but not much longer. Her purpose would have been outdated once the senshi were destroyed. And with her life extinguished, the martial artist would also cease to be a credible threat."  
  
"Or perhaps he would react... contrary to that idea?"  
  
"Perhaps. Yet without the powers of the assembled senshi, Ranma Saotome is at best a small thorn in our side." He folded his arms and contemplated the battle below. Then he gathered himself, called up a slipgate. "Come. We have... other duties to carry out while the senshi host are occupied." Together, they teleported out.  
  
******  
  
Kari's thighs gripped Ranma as they lay in the enclosed space. He tried to shift one, but she shook her head slowly, a playful smile on her face. "Ah ah ah..." she sing-songed, "You don't really want to do that. Those knees, my elbows... they're all that's holding the building up. And you know, while I was hoping for some action to go no down here... there's not really so much room. And I can't move to prop anything up better, you know. So I wouldn't think of moving for a while."  
  
"We've got to get out of here!" Ranma said.  
  
"Mmmmm, perhaps. I think it's much cosier here." Kari relaxed a little, and Ranma felt her body sink further into his. "I mean, you're so hard... so strong... I just feel so safe here, with you..."  
  
"But -"  
  
"And someone'll dig us out. I mean, c'mon, those senshi girls, they're strong? But they're not exactly bright. So they'll get us out of here - eventually - because they're strong and they'll have to show off. You know how that is though, don't you?" Kari's face drifted down over one of Ranma's biceps, and she sniffed deeply. "You like showing off. Mitsuki won't admit it, but she watches you in training more than she watches her partners. Because, you know, she likes the way you move in your gi. How taut your muscles get. That thin sheen of sweat you build up across your body. The way you bounce in your pants. She's such an embarrassing relation."  
  
"Relation?" squeaked Ranma. "What do you -"  
  
Kari sighed, lifting her head until the back of it bumped against the low ceiling. "We're all like one big happy family in here. You know. What got her through her mother's death. She couldn't handle it, so we did. The aspects of her personality. Intelligence, compassion, aggression, imagination, greed, jealousy... we're all represented. She's the main one of us, you know, and we spin around her like planets around a star, all hoping for our time in the light. But some of us don't want that. She's weak, useless. She can't function. She can't act on her feelings for you. She doesn't want to. Thinks that'd be wrooong. She's just a sop. Hotaru's the same; we've got no respect for her. We did, once, and then she gets all guilty for trying to kill you. Pffft."  
  
"She still feels for me. She just thinks I won' accept her again unless she gets punished." Ranma wished he could push Nemesis' hair from his face, as it was hanging directly down onto it, but he couldn't reach. While he could reach the back of his head with his uninjured right hand, he couldn't reach his face easily, and he couldn't reach the left side of his face, where the hair kept brushing. Kari apparently found it amusing to see him annoyed as she obviously knew he wanted it moved away but made no move to shift her head's position to where it wouldn't brush across him. "I don' feel that at all. I've seen enough of my friends mind-controlled inta trying ta kill me, and been mind-controlled enough m'self, that I don't care. She doesn't understand that, though."  
  
"Grah... she's a useless sack of shit and you know it," Kari spat. "She won't do anything for you, not like I will. She won't go down on you, take you into her, make you feel just sooo good... she won't take you on a mystery tour of your body no other girl could hope to match." A wicked glint came into her eye. "She just can't make sex the mind-blowing experience I can."  
  
"You... think it's all about sex?" Ranma asked in disbelief. "If it was that, we'd have... umm..." He could feel himself blushing, and knew he'd scored a point the way Kari's head jerked back into the ceiling. She gave a pained expression, and Ranma felt sorry for unknowingly hurting her, but he wouldn't apologise. Not to this personality.  
  
"You... you asked her to?"  
  
"She asked me, actually..."  
  
"Ah yes. Mitsuki. The sop. Decided then and there she'd lost you to Hotaru." Kari snorted. "You know, it was her who gave her the condom."  
  
"I'll... remember to give her my thanks next time I see her." Ranma half-smiled at the memory, Hotaru at his door, that uncertain expression as she held the packaging up. His own uncertainty, and then Hotaru's new determination. Holding hands and kissing. So much more innocent. So much more intimate. "Mitsuki is... responsible."  
  
"For so much," Kari shot back without thinking. "All our pain, all our losses, all our time out of the spotlight... you know she takes drugs to regulate us? Of course you do."  
  
"And I stopped her from taking them in the tower."  
  
"Yeah. So you know, me being here? It's all your fault."  
  
Ranma shrugged as best he could in the tight quarters. "Do you hear me complainin'? I think I needed to meet you guys. And I meant responsible as in she was thinking of Hotaru and me, not in any other way."  
  
"You like that little slut! Why do you like her? After what she did to you?"  
  
"Why would I like you after what you did to Shampoo?" Ranma replied without the fire Kari's voice contained. He could almost hear the sadness underlying it, the pain, the suffering. "And yet, I do. Mitsuki - her as a whole - is a good student. And a good friend."  
  
"You were nicer when you were a kid," Kari sniffed, turning her head away. "I mean, you've forgotten, but I haven't."  
  
"Neither had I. Just wasn't sure it was you. We were young then." Kari turned back to face him. "And you know, you were wrong then. About not relying on others. I remembered it recently, with Hotaru. An' with you guys. But... not relying on anyone... it means you're alone. And being alone... it sucks, Mitsuki."  
  
"We're not alone!" Kari shouted, and the rubble above her shifted, groaned. She quickly lowered her voice and pushed herself painfully upwards to get off Ranma's chest again to where she had been earlier. "We have each other. And that's something Mitsuki doesn't get or understand. She doesn't see us like that! Just as little hers, to take over when she can't handle something." The bile with which Kari spoke belied the deep pain that ran through the words.  
  
"But... you're all the same person."  
  
"We're not the same personality!"  
  
"You're all aspects of the one personality."  
  
"We're all separate!"  
  
"You need each other more than anyone needs another person."  
  
"Our lives are ours, not hers!"  
  
"Why did you save me, Kari?"  
  
Silence reigned.  
  
******  
  
Pluto, slightly phased-shifted to the left.  
  
Most of what remained of the Moon Kingdom lay here, a few square kilometres surrounding the Gate of Time. Here, with the chronotic energies gushing from the event horizon of the technologically-contained temporal incursion phasepoint, the flow of time often seemed disrupted. The region lay mixed inextricably with an equidistant point in the figurative Past of the mainstream Earth, where the senshi had been cast after the fall of the Moon Kingdom.  
  
Pluto, Uranus and Neptune sat on a great stone plaza that extended towards the edge of the Kingdom, where it was cut off violently from normal space. Pluto had arranged chairs and a table, and all three women were quiet, deep in their oen thoughts. Uranus looked bored, Neptune lost in a private daydream with a slight smile on her face, Pluto annoyed.  
  
Finally, the Guardian of the Gate couldn't sit still any longer, and she stood. "Something's coming." She spun her Garnet Rod into existance, and prepared. Uranus and Neptune also snapped to attention, pushing chairs back and standing, Uranus leaning forward ready to make the first strike. All three concentrated in the one direction, Pluto staring towards the growing disturbance, Neptune and Uranus following her lead.  
  
"What is it?" Uranus asked.  
  
Pluto shook her head. "I don't know. I would suggest it is one of the old Dark Kingdom battlecruisers, but all were destroyed when Queen Serenity sealed the Dark Kingdom. The power levels are similar, but I find it impossible to understand how -"  
  
Impossible or not, it was a Dark Kingdom warship that pierced the dimensional walls and shimmered down into a recognisable construct. Cannons waved and picked targets before firing. The senshi were spared.  
  
"NO!" Pluto roared. "Don't upset the balance of energies of this place! It exists purely because of the balance between Light and-" She didn't get to finish. Spacial dimensions warped around the senshi, the Kingdom fragment altering from looking normal to being warped into a toroidal structure. Pluto knew the phase-shift that kept the fragment of the realm wouldn't last much longer under this kind of pressure, and likewise knew that no matter what happened to the realm, the Gate would still stand. She grabbed at Uranus and Neptune, throwing them backwards from where the realm was starting to tear and dissolve. "Go! Go! Flee back to Earth! I must warn -"  
  
Pluto leapt for the Gate, passing through. Neptune and Uranus similarly shimmered out of existance. The cruiser fired one more salvo, the Gate parted and a rush of temporal energies gushed through, then the cruiser departed for the docks at dark netherworlds attached to Earth's primary plane.  
  
******  
  
Onboard the bridge, Yoshihiro smiled, and patted the command console appreciatively. "Beryl's Generals had good foresight to place one of these safely into storage. Quite why they never used them before now, I'll never know."  
  
"Likely not, Master, but perhaps it is because without the Moon Kingdom in existance, there is no use for them?" Umiko pondered. "The specifications read that these would not function in the primary plane, and thus at this phase of the war, would be completely useless."  
  
"Perhaps. There must be something we can salvage for use, though."  
  
Umiko tapped a master systems display monitor. "We can strip the crew quarters and give our forces better living accomodations than stolen sewage systems."  
  
"Yes... but I was rather hoping for something a little more... dangerous..." Yoshihiro's eyes fell on the main computer systems. He leaned forward, entered a password, and glanced through the file structures to see what they contained. "Oh," he said, a little surprised. "This might work."  
  
******  
  
Sailor Moon noted the appearance of Ranma's friends from Nerima (using the term wryly, even in her head) in the streets below, helping move people. And a few who she assumed were his 'friends' as well, up on the buildings, helping out against the beast as best they could. And two incredibly old people who she first thought were rooftop gargoyles, until they unleashed powerful ki attacks, such as she'd seen Ranma loosen.  
  
But no amount of chains, fire, oversized maracas, canes or blasts of multicoloured pyrotechnics did anything more than irritate the beast. Meanwhile, the other heroes, knowing what the gameplan was for the moment was, were attacking the injured side as and when they could. Chunks of soft matter exploded outwards from it every few minutes as someone scored a good direct hit, but it wasn't slowing the beast down fast enough. Claws would rake out, and the tail would snap, and someone would be injured.  
  
Already, they were down three heroes. The Incredible Growing Jester Girl hadn't yet gotten up from the near-eviscerating kick she'd been dealt, the two girls Tuxedo Kamen had rescued hadn't yet rejoined up into the purple robot girl, and the oversized fire-breathing flying tiger had been smacked into a building and hadn't yet rejoined the battle. She assumed he was seeing to the safety of Jester Girl down below, as they and the angel flapping about firing off arrows appeared to be a team.  
  
Sailor Moon suspected there were others missing, but she couldn't say for certain. Things were just moving too fast for her to keep an accurate track of who was doing what, and she was also worried about Ranma and Sailor Nemesis, neither of whom had dug their way out of the rubble below. She suspected both were too mean to die, but not having seen them appear yet was worrying - maybe they were stuck and needed help getting free? But she couldn't spare anyone at the moment. Not even Tuxedo Kamen, who was throwing roses with abandon when he wasn't assisting those knocked away or injured with the angel.  
  
A flicker of pseudomotion whipped her head around, and Sailor Moon was just in time to catch the cut-off scream of someone who was about to die as jaws snapped shut around him. She didn't catch who it was, but she noted it wasn't one of the senshi. Damn. Down another warrior, and a death like that, so simple and obvious, would ruin morale more than it already was. Had it been a magical attack, the survivors could rebuild their confidence by pretending they could have survived it, but being eaten... that had a primal finality that affected everyone much worse, deep down.  
  
This was getting worse. With the shock, people pulled back, hesitated. Wondering if they would be next. Sailor Moon paused herself, wondering if she was making a huge mistake with this battle - they were making such little progress, and the city's centre was almost deserted. They just HAD to be safe now; even if the beast wasn't defeated, what could it do? Surely Sailor Pluto would have shown up by now to warn them Crystal Tokyo's future was endangered if it was - the fact she hadn't this time was suggestive that whatever this monster could do wasn't enough to affect the path of destiny.  
  
Should she pull her friends out? Her soldiers? The forces of good were flagging, tiring. The fight had only taken half an hour as yet, but everyone was overextended. Even Tuxedo Kamen, wherever he was at present, wasn't leaping with his usual grace. Jupiter had reverted to firing off whatever powerful attacks she could manage without any of the finesse she'd been learning in her morning training sessions. Saturn was distracted. And Sailor Moon's own body ached painfully as she continued to heal. If she pulled out, it would turn into a general retreat of the forces of good. It would give everyone a chance to recover, time to strategise, and organised a proper assault. Time for her to seek guidence from Luna, from Pluto. Have Mercury find some method in the histories of the Moon Kingdom of fighting huge monsters. Or something.  
  
Anything.  
  
Yet, she knew somehow if they stopped now, they'd never have another chance.  
  
And more, she knew somehow if they stopped, they would all die.  
  
The beast lashed out with its tail, swipping the top few floors off an adjacent building. The last few straggling human survivors below limped up the burning, broken streets towards perceived safety. It was then that Sailor Moon realised they had to hold firm. Her wand came up, centred along her body and face. She spun it around in a circle, gathering ambient energies from the environment around her, then loosened them with a throaty roar of anger and anguish. The energy attack impacted on the wounded flank, and the beast roared again, tail lashing at another building. The senshi took their lead from Sailor Moon, and the others from them, and the attack was renewed.  
  
The line was drawn; would it hold?  
  
******  
  
It was still silent, save for the creaking of the shifting rubble above. Somewhere, Ranma could dimly hear a burst water main, and heard water dripping somewhere nearby. Damn. That'd be right, he reflected. No doubt it was uphill of where they were right now, too, and he'd get wet and then who know what Kari would get up to? What she might be encouraged to do? But it wasn't time to think of things like that. They were trapped, and regardless of Kari's refusal to get personal about the reasons she had saved his life - if she was as nasty as she thought she was - she wanted to survive as much as he did, and she wouldn't readily do anything to change that potential outcome.  
  
It wasn't anger or aggression he sensed from her; it was loneliness, bitterness at being left alone. If he'd had to guess, Kari was the part of Mitsuki that hated her mother for dying and leaving her and her father alone - the Mitsuki he and his father had been introduced to a decade earlier. Violent, spiteful, contrary. But grown-up now. Possessing a powerful sexuality, whether she realised it or not (Ranma guessed she did), and existing to make others feel as she does.  
  
So she wouldn't be alone anymore.  
  
That was Ranma's theory, anyway, and for the moment, he was going to stick to it.  
  
From above, there was a wave of heat through the rubble, and a blast of ki energy that raised the hair on the back of Ranma's neck and arms. It felt wrong. Tortured. Mutated. Almost like cancer of the soul, a darkness, a blight eating away at the best parts of onesself. The beast. Raijin, he knew instinctively. He heard and felt the roar through the chunks of concrete trapping his left hand. It sounded like pain, yet also anticipation: whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon. He could feel it in his blood, everything within him starting to swirl and build. The climax of the event was coming, and Ranma felt he had to be out there when it rose.  
  
He switched his attention back to Kari, eyes averted from his face, trying to use her hair as a veil. Ranma reached up and stroked it aside, bringing his hand down the side of her cheek. "We gotta get out of here," he said, quietly.  
  
Her face twitched, flinching away from his touch, and yet seemingly returning to the caress. It wasn't a sexual manoeuvre, and she responded to it as it was intended. Comfort. The anger in her hard eyes faded, replaced with sadness. "Do you know... why I saved you?" she asked, eventually, distantly. Ranma shook his head. "I think maybe you can guess. We're... I am lonely. And you seem like... a nice body... warm... soft, but hard in all the right places... but you're not like that... I think I... we... would like you like that, but... it's really hard..."  
  
"Then when you're ready," Ranma said, waving it aside. "We've got to get out of here now." He removed his hand, and her head tilted towards where it had been, the hurt in her eyes behind the anger now clearly visible to anyone really looking close up, but he dropped his hand to her shoulder. "Mitsuki, I promise I'll help you. When we get outta here, I'll help you get back together." His hand moved to rest lightly on the rubble above her now. "Now, I need your help. I'm going to move, and we're going to get outta here, but I need you to cover me, hold everything up, while I get ready to do this. Can you handle that?"  
  
She paused, and made to settle against him for more comfort before realisation of their predicament registered again, and she nodded dumbly.  
  
"Okay. I'm going to free my hand from this rubble, and then, I'm going ta push against you." Ranma spoke slowly and clearly as he gathered his concentration and power. He'd need everything he had to pull this off, and he'd need speed. He wouldn't be able to handle things as well if Kari didn't understand what he was doing and reated badly. "I'm sure you can take the stress and pain you'll be under. You've handled worse; this building toppling on ya, for example. But I'll push you up to get some room, and I want you ta hold that pose I leave you in. It'll give me some space to move in. Just keep that pose until I can charge up, an' we'll go out of here together. okay?"  
  
Kari nodded again, then she ducked her head a little lower. For a moment, Ranma thought she was about to kiss his cheek; instead, she merely rested her cheek against his, her hair brushing over his face. "Okay," she said, sadly, softly, and she pulled back, looked into his eyes as if it would be the last time she'd ever see him. She braced herself against the rubble pressing into her back, and then Kari was gone.  
  
Who was in her place, Ranma didn't know, but he or she knew what Ranma had planned and didn't move.  
  
No more time to waste. The water sound was closer now. Ranma gritted his teeth, and yanked on his left arm with all the leverage he could manage in a position he couldn't move in. It shifted, but not enough. He pulled again, straining to move his limb. It would be so much easier if only he knew how deep down he was, how much rubble lay above them. If he knew, he might be able to chance a ki attack now, but there could be a support structure under there holding everything up, and he didn't know if Nemesis would be able to hold any possible more weight on her back. So he continued to pull.  
  
It seemed to take forever, but in reality was likely only half a minute, but his hand started to be able to move. He felt pain, but focussed beyond that as he tried to increase his range of motion of the extremity, hoping to get it to an angle he could easily pull it out. He knew by now that if he could shift his torso over so he could continue to alter the angle of his wrist so it was nearly parallel with both his forearm and the wall of the cocoon of debris they lay on, he could almost slide his hand out freely. But not being able to get his hand around to that angle from where he was lying, he couldn't. unless...  
  
He looked up at Nemesis, sweating now, pain in her eyes that was nothing to do with emotional stress and everything to do with possibly thousands of tonnes of concrete and steel above her back, and made the decision. While he held her gaze, he simply twisted his forearm and snapped his wrist. Then he forced his wrist to turn to be almost perpendicular to his forearm as he extended that out to the side of the area, and then yanked towards his feet. With a final tearing of soft flesh, his hand slid out of its entrapment.  
  
Nemesis' eyes opened even wider at the sickening sound of Ranma's bones breaking, and they darted over to the side to see if she could see the damage. But her hair was in the way, and she couldn't clear it. Ranma just smiled comfortingly at her.  
  
"Relax. I know what I'm doin'." Yes, it hurt. But his attention could be focussed beyond the pain, to block it out while he continued his work. He shifted his right hand under Nemesis, the palm finding its way past her breasts to rest on the bow just below her collarbone. A thigh shifted, and some judicious wiggling on Ranma's part got it under one of Nemesis' legs. When he started lifting with his hand, he'd be able to slide his shin up to lay across her crotch, hip and stomach, and get some real strength involved to push her up into a position that'd give him some room to manoeuvre.  
  
He lifted, veins on his right arm almost popping out of his skin. Muscles corded as he pushed at Nemesis' chest, forcing her up away from him. Sweat beaded across his face and exposed skin. Nemesis, too, was helping as she could, her arms thusting down into the ground either side of Ranma's head, and as Ranma lifted her, she was raised into a position she could make the most of her legs. She strained, and lifted her hips off of Ranma. The debris around them both cracked and groaned, and as a dust jet blew into the hole for a few moments, Ranma thought the whole lot was going to come down on them. But the flow of dust stopped, and Ranma lifted his leg more, placed his shin so he could get the best leverage along Nemesis' underside until she was higher, and pushed again.  
  
The senshi pushed the rubble up even more, and eventually, there was a space under her. Not yet quite enough for Ranma to spin around and stand up in, but close to it. Ranma shifted his leg again, bringing a foot to bear against her stomach. She gritted her teeth, tightened every muscle she had in her stomach that would respond to give Ranma something solid to push against, and pushed yet again.  
  
And then, there was enough room. She opened her eyes, and gasped upon seeing Ranma's twisted and broken left hand, as he twisted underneath her and moved into a crouching position under her stomach. He came up underneath her, wrapping his good hand around the side of her hip, the other pressed up against the opposite side of her skirt. She could feel the exposed bones shift in wrong ways against the fabric and tried to think more about what was going to happen once they were out of the rubble rather than dwelling on Ranma's current injuries.  
  
She heard water close by, and then as he pushed against her to try to link his hands behind her back, a gush of the liquid blasted the both of them. Great, a water pipe, Nemesis grimaced, feeling Ranma change against her. Comforting, though, in ways hugging a man wasn't. Yet it was also a bad thing, she reflected; she didn't know if Ranma's female form was as strong as his male. Particularly while injured. She heard Ranma mutter a "Oh, *great*," before trying to continue to worm his hands to meet behind her back. The newly-broken pipe continued to pour water upon them for a few seconds, then petered out, creating an ankle-deep puddle for them.  
  
Ranma's hands met, and then Ranma pushed into Nemesis' body tightly, blowing his energies outside of him. Pain lanced through his broken wrist and mangled left hand as he grabbed it tighter with his right, and that threatened to destablise his concentration, so he just forced himself to stop feeling it, to think of his broken hand as simply something that hadn't been injured. It worked; his hand stopped sending shooting, stabbing pain up his forearm, and he could concentrate properly again. Around them, the structure groaned, and shifted; then it started to collapse. Ranma could hear slabs of concrete above accordian down onto successive slabs, heading down towards Nemesis and himself. If he didn't work fast, they'd both be squashed flat. He focussed, saw the patterns of his lifeforce spiralling around he and Mitsuki, reached out with a mental hand, and grabbed one. Twisted it into a new pattern. Did the same to half a dozen other strands of ki, shaping them into a protective and destructive shield, all in the space of a second.  
  
Then he pushed out through his feet with ki, and launched himself and Nemesis into the air.  
  
Well, it would have been the air, if they hadn't been surrounded by huge chunks of concrete and iron. His shield melted and burned away obstructions as they made for the surface. Nemesis, in his arms, sobbed, and Ranma blinked comfortingly at Mitsuki. "Shhh. Nearly there now."  
  
And they were. A few more seconds, and there was light.  
  
******  
  
And it was good.  
  
******  
  
Raijin roared again, and powerspiked one of the little girls. In his previous life, he'd have loved to have stayed and played with them, dug through their insides and seen their pretty pretties. Ate them, devoured them, taken them into him, made them truly one with him in no way their sluttish behaviour could ever match. He was tempted to eat another right now, he was peckish again - that last snack had done little to fill his now-enormous stomach. And yet, a small part of his mind reminded him he had work to do.  
  
The tower. It was barely two buildings over. A quick leap and he could take it down. But that wasn't what the Master wanted, oh no. What he wanted was worse: power. And for that, he needed the tower. So he had to move slower. But these idiotic people were slowing him down and starting to actually hurt him. He couldn't see it exactly, but judging by the fiery streaks of pain from his left thigh, he thought he had a fairly serious injury right there. Not life-threatening, no, but serious all the same. Anything that influenced his life negatively was threatening, and slowing him down, making him a larger target as it were, an easier one definitely, that counted as influencing his life negatively. One of the little girls leapt in front of him, smashing him in the snout with a burst of multicoloured light from a wand before jumping away to try again from another point. It did no damage, but Raijin briefly wondered what experiences a trollop like her could bring to his life: rotting in his stomach, becoming one with him, their minds linked... what would he see? What would he feel? He shook his head, he didn't have time to fantasize.  
  
******  
  
"He's slowing down!" Sailor Moon yelled to the others. "We've hurt him! now, everyone, ATTACK!"  
  
******  
  
Snapping Raijin out of his daydream were bursts of energy, magical attacks, kicks, punches, projectile weapons, explosives... he stopped bothering to classify them, and decided to show them just who really was boss here. He didn't need any of them to help him to get closer to completion, for they weren't pure of thought or soul - their dress and the fact they decided to side against him was evidence enough of that.  
  
He swept out sideways with both forepaws, knocking three of the pretty girls flying. A snap of his tail from side to side was all that was needed to dispose of another five people, and that annoying flying flame lion... a quick snap of his jaws stopped that freak from trying to fight anymore. A gulp and a swallow, and Raijin listened to the echoing sound of its yell as it descended down through his throat to his stomach in his eardrums. Mmmm, good food. He burped, and blew the last remaining nearby windows out. The remaining costumed idiots paused, horrified, before renewing their attack. The little growing giant girl smashed him again from the rear with her staff, wings whipping it into a narrow sword that she brought down on Raijin's tail. Scale, flesh and bone parted under it, and he roared as the large section of tail smashed down to the ground below. He turned, and powerspiked the girl in the face. Tears the size of a bus flew from her eyes as she flew backwards, the tears smashing through the sides of buildings, the girl shrinking again and falling for the ground. Raijin raised his tailstump, gushing thick ichor, and fired upon it, cauterising the wound instantly, before turning back to face Tokyo Tower. There it was. Just ahead now. He decided to stop playing and get down to work.  
  
Passed one building. Coming up to the second. And then -  
  
- but what was that?  
  
******  
  
The ground, again. The top of the pile of rubble that was once a building housing twenty thousand workers before it had been evacuated that morning, and before it had been reduced to debris. There was a hole on the top of it now, and there two people stood. Two women. Both wore torn clothing, and the taller of the two was being held up by her companion.  
  
Nemesis lifted a hand to Ranma's side. "Go," she said, simply, and then slid from his arms. Ranma's hands caught her she she went down, and guided her to a soft landing. He made her comfortable, best as he could in the circumstances, and then stood, a look of anger on his face so powerful, those close enough to see it involuntarily took a step back.  
  
Saturn landed nearby, ran a few steps towards Nemesis to help her get back into the fight, and then she stopped dead. There was something wrong about the way Ranma looked. Something seriously wrong.  
  
Was it his stance? No, she'd seen him angry before. Granted, not *this* angry, but it didn't look like anger. Was it the fact that his very obviously injured left wrist and hand seemed to be reassembling themselves as Saturn watched? No, she'd seen him heal before, just not this fast. She'd have thought another day or two for him to have healed from that kind of damage.  
  
No. Ranma, in his female form, had bright red hair. Ranma, standing here, in his female form, had ebony black hair. Fingers curled into fists, and there was a tangible presence of power in the area. Ranma sank slightly into the rubble as if he'd just gotten heavier. His ki field stormed up around him, giving the imrpession of him standing alone in an inferno. Brighter and brighter, the power levels became, and still he powered himself up. There seemed to be a vacuum, sited right where Ranma stood, that sucked everything loose into it. Saturn watched dust fly towards him and burn up upon reaching his ki field.  
  
And then she could feel her own power leeching away from her. She staggered a few steps forward before being able to stop herself, but more and more power flew from her. As her transformation dropped, Hotaru noted the other senshi were also having power drawn off from them. Tuxedo Kamen made it to safety before he, too, was drained. In one foul swoop, Ranma had just defeated the senshi and their support.  
  
And not just them. The other heroes staggered and collapsed, and the monster even seemed to hesitate. She could feel something wrong with him, something powerfully wrong. And then she knew what it was.  
  
******  
  
Yoshihiro's head snapped up from the monitor he was reading, and without a word, he conjured up a slipgate and disappeared from the Moon Kingdom battlecruiser, reappearing above the ruins of Tokyo. There was incredible power here. And it was very familiar. Natsumi? Already?  
  
But no, this wasn't her style. She wasn't the kind of person to make such a gesture, not without being in the game again. And she wasn't. No, this had to be someone else. Yamazaki would let him know when Natsumi was ready to operate again... and as he hadn't... no, this was definitely -  
  
- Ranma. He could see him now, in his female form, below, standing on the rubble of the building. A fierce glow surrounded him, and no senshi or other heroes remained standing. Ranma's face was one of intense anger, and he headed directly for Raijin.  
  
"Shit." Without wasting any more words, Yoshihiro gated back to the bridge of his new toy to await Yamazaki's report.  
  
******  
  
Dark General!  
  
The words echoed through Ranma's mind, and yet he didn't feel evil. Not even particularly so. Angry, yes. A lot of people had died today because of this beast, an awful lot of people, and more could, and likely would, still die. He had to be stopped, and it looked like Ranma was the only one with the strength to pull it off. The others had apparently given up, because he saw Ami, Usagi, Rei, Makoto and Minako collapsed on building rooftops, gasping for breath. Mamoru also lay stretched out, and people Ranma didn't recognise, and then people he did.  
  
The Nerima crowd. Figures. But they were as exhausted as everyone else. A glance back down at Mitsuki and Hotaru and... and both were weakened as well. Even Hotaru, who, moments ago as Saturn, had exuded power beyond Ranma's. Now, she was weak, hurting.  
  
And then he realised. When he'd pulled at his reserves, he'd also grabbed from everyone else. He could hear them in his head, feel them in his heart, and knew it to be true. Damn. Damn damn damn. But no use worrying about it now, he decided. The monster, Raijin, had taken advantage of Ranma's momentary lack of attention, and sent a powerspike his way. With a flick of a forearm, though, Ranma deflected it into the air. It kept going. By then, another had been fired, and another, and another. Ranma deflected all three, snapkicking the last back back at Raijin himself.  
  
Dark General, Ranma thought as he deflected the blasts. Natsumi's gift. That kiss, the one that had knocked her out. Whatever it had done... he felt it had helped. But... she'd said he tasted of... of what? Knowing what he did now, Ranma assumed she had been about to say, "Dark Kingdom," but that was impossible... wasn't it? His brain flicked back to something that had happened a couple of months ago now...  
  
******  
  
Nabiki opened her hand, and blew on her palm. Ranma noted glittering particles get swept up, and he jumped back to avoid them in case it was something creepy or poisonous. Yet, he couldn't avoid tem all, and inhaled some. He didn't feel any worse off a few moments later, and so he assumed it hadn't had any effect on him, and he turned back to Nabiki...  
  
******  
  
Had that been what Natsumi had been talking about? Had he already been turned into a Dark General and just hadn't known? No, not likely... probably turned into a monster, or started to have been turned into one. And Natsumi's kiss had done the rest. He was now strong, intensely so, and could feel power ripple through every finger, every toe, every strand of hair. His teeth crackled with electricity whenever he moved his jaw.  
  
And then the powerspikes were gone, and Raijin - how Ranma knew his name, he didn't know, but he did - turned in slow motion, and made to step across to the Tokyo Tower. Whatever plan the beast had for the tower, Ranma didn't want to find out. A burst of ki through his legs, and he sped across and into Raijin's back, puncturing the scaled hide and splashing through his internal organs, burning everything shut as he passed through. For a scant moment, he passed through Raijin's stomach, and saw people there, and animals, some still alive. Ranma hoped they could get out by themselves now he'd made an exit, but for the moment, he didn't have the time to stop and rescue them. He continued out, and flew in an arc to face Raijin, eye to eye.  
  
"This stops here, ya hear me?" he yelled. Raijin swiped at him, but Ranma dodged easily, only then realising -  
  
- he wasn't aiming for the martial artist. His claws locked onto the tower, and he hauled himself upright again. Fluids gushed from his wounds, but he paid no heed. This was it, the endgame. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen now.  
  
Ranma turned to the heroes, but found them still slumped. No help there. And while he suspected he was now stronger than this monster, Ranma had no wish to put that to the test, if that would chance some corrupting of his personality. He still felt like himself, but was that accurate? Was he still himself, or was he something dark, twisted and evil, and just didn't know it, couldn't see it? But for now, he had to shelve thought. Raijin snapped his jaws in Ranma's direction, and he shimmered, blurred, then reappeared just to the right of the locked teeth. The beast didn't hesitate, but snapped his jaws again and again, swinging Ranma around and away from the tower -  
  
- as Raijin clamped a second claw down on the structure. It groaned under his weight, twisting and starting to pitch back. But Raijin only needed a second more. He snapped his head back around, threw it back and roared, pouring energies into the metal supports, which hummed and buzzed, great electrical bolts arcing from the girders to nearby buildings. Where they touched vanished into puffs of vapour, and Ranma saw with horror they were approaching where the fallen lay.  
  
He attempted to punch Raijin, winding up and throwing his fist forward with all his ki behind it, all his strength. But the energy ball and physical impact didn't even touch the giant monster. The bolts grew ever closer to the senshi, who were nearer the tower when he'd drained them than the others, and Ranma had to make a choice: did he try to stop Raijin here, now, again, or did he save the lives of his friends?  
  
It was no choice.  
  
He sped for the closest senshi, Rei, and gathered her up in his arms in a blur of red and black, before grabbing Ami and slinging her over his other shoulder. He bounced away, stowing them safely before speeding back for the others. He managed to work just ahead of the arcing bolts as he gathered Mamoru, a pair of twin girls, an angel, a severely injured girl... the list grew with each trip. And there was Ryoga, and Mousse, and Shampoo, and Cologne, and even Happosai. He didn't recognise most of the people he gathered up and took to relative safety, but that didn't stop him from working feverishly. Hotaru had smiled sadly at him before she closed her eyes again, and Mitsuki's face was covered in tracks of dried tears, but most people were either still unconscious, or not reacting to what was going on around them.  
  
Once they were safe from the immediate danger, he turned towards Raijin again. He'd end it this time.  
  
******  
  
Yamazaki, in his human guise, wandered the streets of Kanagawa. Even here, people were fleeing for their lives. Those from the city's centre had just reached this prefecture, and were still heading out. Yamazaki sighed. It had been too long since the last giant monster attack. Even he, old as he was, had trouble remembering when the last such onslaught had been. He suspected it had been Gojira, back in 1985 or so, but at his age, it was hard to remember sometimes.  
  
For he wasn't as young as he looked. Outwardly, he appeared to be around 20 years of age. Inside, he'd just had his ninety-third birthday the previous week. The cost of his soul, of his life, to work with the Master? Youth. Eternal youth. He'd always be older than he looked. It was a price he could live with.  
  
And here he was, in Kanagawa. People ran past him, camera crews set up on the hills surrounding the ward for better views of the battle in the city, and cars filled the roads. But none of this concerned him. He had his orders, and they were to ignore all these people.  
  
No, there was one person he was interested in. And there she was. Standing near the bridge, her older sister talking to a young man in glasses who kept laughing nervously. That may have been due to the angry woman standing behind him, but she restrained herself for some reason. A closer look with his enhanced senses, and Yamazaki recognised that Keitaro Urashima that Natsumi had brought over to their side for a time, and he assumed therefore the angry girl was his love interest, whom he'd abused during his time as a soldier for the Kingdom. For the Master.  
  
The girl he was to talk to still held her VR headset resting above her brow, dataglove clipped to the top of her skirt. She looked bored, and when her gaze passed over Yamazaki, there was no hint of recognition in it. She didn't remember him, nor her time as a General. Any other time, Yamazaki would have amused himself and played with her, but time was of the essence. The Master apparently thought the martial artist would resurrect himself and pose a greater threat than anyone else thought, and that the senshi might be able to stop Raijin from carrying out his mission, but Yamazaki didn't actually think this Ranma Saotome was much of a threat. After all, he hadn't yet been able to stop the Master, had he? No. Not even Natsumi Otohime had managed that, in her arrogant dreams of leading the last remaining forces of the Dark Kingdom.  
  
But here she was now, bored, looking like she could use some adventure. Yamazaki decided to give her some.  
  
He continued to head in Natsumi's direction, while her gaze drifted further from him. But once she caught him in her peripheral vision, heading directly for her, she turned back, curious to find his eyes locked directly on hers. She thought it strange, that after waking up in that Ranma's house, she hadn't been afraid like she had used to, before she'd blacked out for those months. Once, she'd flinched every time Watanabe had glanced in her direction, or walked within half a kilometre of her, but now, she fronted him up at school, forced him to back down when she felt like it. She didn't seem to be afraid of much. But right now, those old shivers started travelling along her spine, and some organ deep inside her shrivelled up and tried to hide behind her kidneys.  
  
It wasn't that he looked weird. Quite the contrary, he was rather attractive for an older man. She herself was rather young still, and although he appeared to be Mutsumi's age, he was still too old for her to even think about in that sense. For her, anyway. She preferred boys her own age. Was it that he had his eyes locked on her, making her feel uncomfortable? No. She'd seen that needing expression from Watanabe lots of times. Except from him, it was the need to humiliate, the need to isolate, the need to destroy. This looked like a much more primal need. That was a little worrying, but even with Raijin in the city at the Master's behest, she wasn't worried about sexual predators while around Naru.  
  
Hang on... Raijin? She racked her brain, but couldn't find any reference to what was in the city anywhere. Perhaps it had slipped out of that place in her brain where she suspected her missing actions had been stored, because she'd had several weird slips in her mind or speech over the last month or so since she'd woken up at the Ai Sou. But that wasn't what was scaring her.  
  
With a start, she realised it was the way he was walking. That calm, self-assured gait did not sit well on young shoulders. There was something wrong here, very wrong, and she just couldn't place it. It was like something was yelling through a soundproof wall in the back of her mind. But her fingers moved by themselves, and found her headset, dropped it down over her eyes. With a blink, it started up an operating system Natsumi hadn't known existed in the system, and winked warning reticles over the young man. Before she could do much more than step back, though, he was in front of her, an arm clamping down on her shoulder. She struggled to pull back, and cried out in shock. Everyone turned, and Naru stepped forward, fist already up and moving. Keitaro's came from the other side of Natsumi, also heading for the young man's face.  
  
Yet, he reached up lazily with one hand, deflected Naru's punch and then redirected Keitaro's into Naru. Keitaro, surprised, then allowed himself to be tossed backwards. The others were coming forward then, yelling something, and before Natsumi even had time to try to break away, blackness rose up and swallowed Yamazaki and herself.  
  
******  
  
They reappeared elsewhere, in a room that evidenced high-technology everywhere. Sculpted consoles that resembled dragon's claws rising up from beneath the floor grating, lights that looked like popped boils and monitors that looked like blisters. Her mind knew what this was, but she couldn't accept it, not right now. There was a shimmery sound, and a black portal opened in front of her. A blond-haired man dressed all in black stepped out, and smiled at Natsumi.  
  
"We meet again," he smiled, before taking her from Yamazaki and walking her to something that looked more like a demon had wrenched down through the ceiling and let its hand be used as a command chair. "I'd like you to sit here."  
  
Meeker than she had been for a while, she allowed herself to be placed in the chair. Something here seemed so very wrong, this man, whoever he was, shouldn't have been so nice to her. She felt he should have been trying to burn her, or poke her with sharp things, or other forms of torture she didn't want to elaborate on. Him being nice wasn't something that her body, the animal in her, thought he should be. As she stared up at him much as a baby rabbit stares up at a fox before being eaten, he smiled comfortingly and tapped her VR headgear.  
  
"Fear not, little one, for this is all we need."  
  
"O... oh?" she squeaked, and fumbled for the band to release it and hand it to him.  
  
"Yes, just that." He smiled again, reached behind his back for something on a nearby pedestal, then stopped as if something had just occurred to him. "Oh, and a brain to run it."  
  
His hand whipped out from behind his back, and he jammed the cable he'd been holding against the side of the headset. Like it was liquid, the end of the cable splattered, but then started digging into the materials of the set, as well as Natsumi's skull. She screamed, but no one present much cared.  
  
******  
  
Raijin's back arched, his form swollen with power. Tokyo Tower, likewise, crackled with mystical energies that swirled upwards into the sky. Dark clouds formed, swirling around in patterns that were almost recognisable and that chilled the blood to even glimpse them. Something bad was about to happen.  
  
Ranma's pose was tense. The electrical arcing had stopped, and right now, he was ready to strike. But Raijin was preparing to do something, something bad, and Ranma wasn't sure what. Rushing in half-cocked didn't sound like such a good idea to him right now, especially considering what he didn't know about himself after these new changes, and so he waited for an opening in which he could safely attack Raijin without possibly exposing everyone else to a killing blow from the monster.  
  
Beside him, Hotaru stirred, pushed herself upright, and held onto Ranma's leg. "Sempai?" she slurred.  
  
"Shhh," Ranma said, not taking his eyes off the monster. Any moment now...  
  
"Sempai? What... what happened...?"  
  
"I dunno, Hotaru-chan," he answered truthfully. "But I think it had somethin' ta do with Nabiki and that Natsumi girl."  
  
Hotaru's fingers dug into his leg a little more. "I'm sorry, Ranma," she said in a low, quiet voice.  
  
It wasn't about this situation, and Ranma knew it. "Don't worry about it, Hotaru-chan," he replied, quiet and also warm. his hand reached down, stroked her cheek momentarily and then patted her head. "Rest now. I've got some monster ta kick into next week." Hotaru removed her hands, and slid down to where she could at least watch, and Ranma bounded away in a blur.  
  
Someone slumped down next to her to watch. Hotaru's eyes shifted over. Akane Tendo. Hotaru wasn't sure what to say to her, especially with the tears that had stained her cheeks, so said nothing. They both watched as -  
  
******  
  
Ranma dove in towards the monster, just as Raijin's form looked as if it would explode. The beast roared suddenly, head thrown back as it poured all the energy it had absorbed from the surrounding buildings and consumed heroes into the tower. The tower crackled, and then a huge sphere of dark explosive fury burst from the structure and rapidly spread outwards. Watching earth and concrete get picked up and vapourised by the expanding field, Ranma paused, made another decision, and sped back to who he thought of as his friends and family.  
  
******  
  
Yoshihiro scanned the monitors, observing the obliteration. Rampant energies collected from Raijin's localised disintegration of the material universe expanded outwards in a sphere of negative energies, breaking apart the binding fields that held matter together. A few more moments, and the senshi would be destroyed... he reflected that, if Ranma Saotome survived, he'd have to thank him for weakening his largest opposing group just enough to let him destroy them. And without the survivors of the Moon Kingdom in evidence, he could happily rebuild the Dark Kingdom at leisure, first in the ruins of Tokyo, where the few survivors would be only too grateful for assistance in rebuilding, and then spreading across the globe like a cancer.  
  
******  
  
Unable to change time for risk of making things worse, Sailor Pluto found herself leaving the Hino shrine, leaving the Inner senshi to discuss what she'd just told them to do. To go to university. to leave this area. Go forth and learn new things that can help them become more powerful, more cunning, better tacticians and strategicians. For a moment, she turned back, almost ready to go inside and tell them to forget it, try some other way of curtailing the threat to the Kingdom's survivors without involving them. But Luna and Artemis stood there, looking a little tense, tails flicking back and forth in timed irritation.  
  
Luna was the first to speak. "Sailor Pluto, what has brought this on?"  
  
Artemis continued on. "Galaxia is defeated. Surely we can rest now, just for a while?"  
  
Pluto stared back. "I've told the senshi their mission."  
  
Not sensing that Pluto considered the discussion finished as she ran through what she had to do next to ensure things didn't get worse in the current future, Luna continued on with an icy glare. "But we've defeated the last -"  
  
Didn't they get it? Didn't they understand yet? After all they'd seen in the Moon Kingdom, and here on Earth? Pluto was amazed. "There never is a 'last'," she spat. "There is always more. That is why there are still senshi, and no peace in the universe. Destroy one, more will spring up to take its place." True, very true. But perhaps not evil. Perhaps it was balance... after all... hadn't that been what Queen Serenity had been worried about, millennia ago? The balance on Earth being disrupted was the catalyst for the fall of the Moon Kingdom, and the rise of the Dark Kingdom to ascendancy... or rather, it would have if Serenity hadn't sealed the Dark Kingdom in the instant before death.  
  
"But Pluto, we've had no indications of anything being spawned. You, yourself, haven't given us any warning of things dire from the future." Artemis again.  
  
And Pluto, who's mind was elsewhere at the time, had no time to concentrate on what she was saying. For someone with some control over the flow of time, she was running out of it awfully fast. She was operating on a schedule here, and the feline advisors to the Princess and her personal guard were ruining it. "Because this current evil... the senshi cannot beat. They need to grow up. They need to learn new things. They have to learn how to get by with nothing but their wits."  
  
"This is why you're sending them to Tokyo University?"  
  
"Yes Luna. That's exactly why." Pluto stood straighter and folded her arms, preparing to leave. "They will learn, or they will die." And, at the moment, it looked like they would die. The sense she felt from the Gate on Pluto was diminished, but she could still travel. So the Gate was still in existance... just the pocket dimensional fragment and the Gate's physical housing had been destroyed, it seemed. Which still left Pluto with access to it, just not the amount of control she'd once enjoyed. In fact, it would likely now be somewhat unpredictable if she tried to carry out anything other than routine travel along a limited temporal vector, so she didn't want to try anything too fancy.  
  
Unless it was completely necessary, that was.  
  
But the cats didn't want to leave it at that. What explanation they'd received wasn't enough for them. While Pluto concentrated on calculating temporal co-ordinates the long, hard way - in her head, rather than making use of the Gate structure's translation systems - Artemis continued.  
  
"University surely isn't that cutthroat..." He stepped forward, trying to engage the older senshi in discussion, to bring out what was really going on in her head at the moment, to find out what she knew rather than be left in the dark. But it didn't work.  
  
Pluto looked up momentarily. "Artemis, there are things worse than study in this world. They will find that out soon enough." Then, she twirled the Garnet Rod, opened a passage to somewhen and somewhere else, and vanished, leaving two confused cats.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru blinked, watching the black wall approach almost in slow motion. She felt she should transform, maybe try destroying these city blocks rather than the planet to stop the black explosive bubble, but that would take energy she just didn't have. So she was resigned to watching her friends die horrible deaths, without being able to do anything about it, one way or the other. Which did indeed suck big time.  
  
Beside her, Akane watched, not quite as exhausted as the youngest senshi was, but maybe that was because she'd not been so close to the heart of the maelstrom that had drained them all, Hotaru thought. Regardless, she now sat, and waited. Her fingers traced lines in the dust of the rubble they sat on as they watched their world end.  
  
The black wall came ever closer - happening in a very few seconds rather than the hours it seemed to be taking to Hotaru.  
  
And then, something was there -  
  
******  
  
Her next stop was uneventful. The girl was coming into her powers now, Pluto knew that much. And she'd suffered the loss of a parent. But there was something else. The man she had been manipulating the senshi into staying with... their teacher-to-be, she needed to know what he was like on a personal level. And the Gate wouldn't let her go near the 'current' time, where the battlecruiser had come from, so she had to pick her times carefully. Upon a little research, she found that, in what might be the future, she would be told that that this Ranma Saotome had seen her as a child, but had apparently considered her to be something of a dream. That would have to be the time she would visit him. Perhaps it was a dream in his recollection; now it wouldn't be.  
  
There he was, in his sleeping bag, outside the ruined house that Nemesis had been spawned in. His father lay beside him, limbs sprawled much as his son's were. Both snored loudly. She stood behind Ranma, where if he woke up, he wouldn't see her. Where she could get away if she felt she had to. She gazed at the back of his head intently. What was it about him that would give the senshi a fighting chance against this new evil, this new Dark Lord? She wasn't sure. She'd only learn, she suspected, by dissecting him, and considering that she didn't have her laboratory anymore, and that his father was lying right next to him, that didn't appear to be a viable option.  
  
Ranma rolled onto his back, still snoring after a slight pause and a snort. His face looked so soft, so innocent, so cheeky. Pluto realised, if he was awake right now, he would almost be staring right up her skirt. But his eyes were closed, and his breathing was still relaxed. He was asleep. She gave him a wan smile, and whispered, "Ranma Saotome, you do not yet realise how important you are to the future." She straightened, then, feeling someone watching her.  
  
Ah, Nemesis. From the treeline, no doubt. Well, her work here was done. All she had to do now was to try and track down Uranus and Neptune and wait for the Gate to allow them to re-enter normal space-time to interact with the senshi. Although, she suspected in support of what she'd told the younger girls and the cats that the three outermost senshi likely wouldn't be able to participate in the coming conflict.  
  
No matter. She tossed her hair, opened a portal, trusted the Gate of Time to take her wherever she was needed most, and stepped into it.  
  
******  
  
Ranma, blasting ki forward and out to the sides. A forcefield of some kind, Hotaru realised stupidly. Projecting as much power as he could to deflect the onrushing wave of dark energies that stripped the life from anything it touched, disassociating atomic bonds as it went. The initial shockwave hit, and Ranma's barrier held firm. Behind him, Hotaru grabbed Akane's arm, angry she couldn't help him. A glance at Akane showed she must have been feeling similar. Hotaru climbed unsteadily to her feet, and leaned on Ranma's back.  
  
"Sempai, I can help," she said, fumbling for her henshin wand. It felt cool and heavy in her fingers, but also strangely reassuring. She pulled it out, and although she could feel Ranma's body telling her not to, her sense of responsibility overwhelmed that and told her she had to help save herself, her sempai, and her friends. She transformed into Sailor Saturn with a short wave of the wand, and placed her hands on Ranma's shoulders, focussing what energy she could muster through her arms and into him. The influx of power whipped at his clothes, the energies pushing him further into the rubble as it broke up beneath them. Dust whipped up, chunks of rock whirling up and away in the vortices taking shape behind the barrier as bioenergetic reactions played havoc with the local laws of physics.  
  
But Ranma's barrier held. A second pair of hands touched his shoulders, and he felt more power. Akane, he recognised it as. He hadn't seen her before, but with the others from Nerima here, he should have known she wouldn't be too far away. Not with things as they had been left after the last 'visit' to the Tendo's. His field burst upwards, disrupting the patterns of the expanding blast wave and setting it on a path of self-destruction. It began to collapse in on itself, mostly harmless now, but Ranma still shielded those around him from the return path of the negative energies.  
  
Raijin looked surprised, but almost fatally depleted of energy now. Ranma took that as the sign that the time had come, and pushed off towards the monster.  
  
He reached him in a few leaps, a ki-charged fist punching through the beast's thick skull and sinking up to his elbow in grey goop Ranma assumed was brain matter. Raijin didn't collapse, although he staggered and slumped. And then, just as his claws were about to release Tokyo Tower -  
  
******  
  
"Now, Baku, rise again!" Yoshihiro shouted. The energy Raijin had channeled back to the battlecruiser fed its way through the ship's computing systems. As they had originally been bulit on mercury, before it's fall to the Dark Kingdom, they, like Natsumi's headset, were capable of almost magical abilities. And one in particular was being channeled now. The only problem was, it required a great deal of computing power, more than a simple head-mounted computer system could offer. But the battlecruiser's systems could take the strain.  
  
Behind him, Umiko purred. She hadn't thought Raijin would succeed, and he hadn't in his primary mission: Tokyo still stood. Yet, he may have succeeded in his secondary purpose: the removal of the heroes from Tokyo, which would make Yoshihiro's plans progress that much faster. And as the energy streamed through long-dead conduits, bringing more and more computing power online, Yoshihiro leant down, and whispered in Natsumi's ear.  
  
******  
  
- something happened -  
  
******  
  
"Is the system running?" Yoshihiro snapped, without moving from Natsumi's ear. Umiko scrambled to check.  
  
"System is at fifty percent capacity," she replied. "No errors in data transmission." She gestured knowingly at Natsumi's strained, but still, form. "How long do you plan to keep her this time?"  
  
Yoshihiro shrugged. "She is only needed to monitor the situation. She can be kept disassociated from the world for as long as she is needed."  
  
"Then do we kill her?"  
  
The Master stared at Natsumi. In truth, he wasn't necessarily evil. His views and beliefs differed to those of the Moon Kingdom, and if killing innocents or civilians was a means to an end, he'd gladly do it. Yet, there was no need for Natsumi to die, for now at least. He shook his head. "No. She may be of use in the future. Leave her for now."  
  
******  
  
- and Raijin exploded, Ranma disappearing in the blast.  
  
Saturn and Akane waited, waited until a breeze blew the clouds of dust and smoke and gore away, but there was nothing. Not even on the ground. Ranma Saotome was missing.  
  
But he'd saved the lives of his friends, and his new family. Akane looked dumbly at Saturn; she'd been expecting to talk to Ranma when he came back, when things settled down, to tell him she had come to terms with Ranma's decision whether or not she agreed with it. She was going to be nice, and try to talk calmly and not lose her temper and ask if they could at least continue to be friends. She had had no doubt they would be, but she had to ask, make sure. She could live without Ranma, if she still saw him, could still talk to him, still share things with him. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.  
  
Saturn took Akane by the elbow, led her back to the other senshi, not looking back. She didn't know where Ranma was, but she could still feel him. Somewhere. She felt Akane could, too. Both would know if he was dead, and... he didn't seem to be. Just missing.  
  
"He'll turn up, you know," she said to Akane, who nodded dumbly in reply. "I don't think he'd go that easily."  
  
"But... what happened?" Akane asked. "He was there, and we were there, and then... he was gone."  
  
"I don't know," Saturn said, shaking her head. "But I assure you, we'll find out." Akane nodded again, still in a little bit of shock at the events of the last few minutes, and Saturn took the chance to glance over her shoulder at the remains of the tower. No Ranma. No cocky grin, no smart-assed comments. No casual appearance to make himself seem even more special than usual by blowing off the most dangerous fight he'd been involved in. Nothing. But he was there, she was sure of that. "We'll find him," she affirmed to herself, and then turned back to help her friends.  
  
TO BE CONTINUED...  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
Weeeee.... huge fic. I haven't written one this long in years. I hope it holds together well; I think it does, and it covers a whole range of flashback-y type things that I was going to include in the future (I don't usually forget about threads I've left hanging) but have included now since so many people seem to think I've not had reasons for where the three eldest senshi have been, or what was going on in Truth with some of the chapters and stuff. I hope that explains a lot more than reading between the lines has done until now.  
  
I originally had a huge 'rant' to go here to answer queries and points raised in a flame thread on a forum I got directed to a couple of months ago; I don't really feel like regurgitating the text there at 1AM, it was very long-winded and in-depth, giving a lot of detail about future chapters and the subtext of a number of previous chapters, so I'll address what I understood were people's major concerns (which have also shown up in ff.net reviews occasionally) in short: there have been a lot of cameos in this series since the very early days of Truth, lots of references to other shows (both anime and not-anime) and such... while I advertise this as a Ranma-Sailor Moon-Love Hina fic, in reality it was more inspired by some of the massed-series spamfics I've seen out there (go NXE!) in the method of how I've been handling crossover elements. In these last two chapters I've felt Tokyo needed Japan's answer to the Avengers: a group made up of the most powerful - or rediculous - heroes of the nation to protect the peoples of Japan from evil monsters. As everyone by now knows, the extra cameos that were to appear in this chapter were the Nerima crowd. I wanted to put them in chapter 13, but there wasn't enough room, and as they weren't terribly important at that point in time, I left them until this chapter.   
  
In addition, I *do* know where the plot is going, and I haven't written myself into any corners yet - I haven't thought much about Justice yet, the third arc, but will be soon as I'm only a few chapters from the end of this arc, but the major events have been mapped out for two years already. A few changes have been made along the way of how to get to those points from time to time, such as Ranma and Hotaru matching up (I liked the two characters immensely, but Hotaru was supposed to be Shinobu - and Shinobu didn't get Keitaro - the readers who encouraged me to make that decision are to thank/blame for that ;) and while Natsumi was going to return in some fashion, originally it wasn't going to be this early in the piece. As to complaints Love is much darker than Truth... I went into writing this as wanting to write a novel. Truth was the setting up of the characters, Love is the middle section of the book, where the characters progress in skill and personality, and the conflicts that have only previously been hinted at or touched on ramp up to become real threats, and Justice is the end, with the climax and resolution. As the story evolves into something more serious, as the characters mature during the progress of their story arcs, the humour matures also. Not necessarily becoming more complicated, just shown in different ways. But with the more serious chapters, humour really jars. I've tried adding some in, and deleted the lines almost immediately as they just sound completely wrong.  
  
On a different note, since I wrote chapter 13, I found a lot more Love Hina references (specifically, I got more manga ^^;;). The Hinata Sou is in Kanagawa Prefecture, on the outskirts of Tokyo 120 degress around from Nerima (around 30-40km in a straight line, according to the maps I have here). The Ai Sou is reasonably close to the Hinata Sou, so that explains why Hotaru's so exhausted when she gets to Furinken ;) Also why Ranma has plenty of time to think when he's on his way to confront Nabiki. Doesn't really change anything, but it's fun to know anyway. Even scarier is the fact that I didn't know in the manga that Mutsumi's family was shown in any detail, and it turns out her mother's name is Natsumi ^^; so Natsumi is named after her mother :P  
  
I didn't mention it in the notes after the last chapter, but last September mum bought two toy poodle puppies to replace the toy that was poisoned last July. They're both beautiful, and (figuratively) deaf when called, and very friendly - and have a tendency to chase things across the road if tey see them. While writing the last chapter, both ran out on the road and one was bowled by a 4 wheel drive. Thankfully, if that term applies, it was the smaller of the two brothers, which meant rather than being killed, he was thrown a fair distance and received a fractured skull, but was otherwise fine. We're very lucky it wasn't one of the big trucks servicing the quarries in this area, but they nearly got hit the other day as well. So I'm back to dog-sitting, as well as having worked a few weeks in the pineapples again, which is why this chapter was later than I was planning (I've had it in various states of completion for the last month and keep thinking, one or two more scenes and it'll be done). I hope you enjoy it, and please excuse the fact this is a LOT later than I was intending on it being.  
  
Next Chapter: Where's Ranma? And what exactly *did* happen with Natsumi? 


	15. Love 15

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
WARNING: This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, shameless rip-offs and limeish content. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned.  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 15  
  
** Paradise Lost **  
  
She woke, as if from a deep sleep. She was sore all over, felt like she'd been kicked by a horse or an elephant, but she could move. Nothing seemed to be broken. No cuts or scratches, not even any bruising. Maybe she just felt fried? She wasn't sure. She got to her feet, agony pushing through her muscles.  
  
The world around her swum back and forth, reality seeming to warp before her eyes until she realised it was a dizzy spell. She'd obviously been lying down for some time. As the blood drained more from her head, she gained her balance, and stood straighter.  
  
Her head felt heavy. She reached up, and touched something that wasn't her head. It was smooth, felt like plastic. She pulled it off, and looked at the object in her hands. It looked like a headset of some kind of arcade game, but she couldn't be sure. The lenses looked clear, and the plastic clean. There was a silhouetted image of a helmeted man with wings on his ankles, and from behind his head and feet ran two parallel lines with the words MERCURY printed between them. She didn't understand.  
  
She shook her head. The fuzziness wasn't going around some things. There was something wrong. She couldn't remember who she was, or how she got here.  
  
But where was here? She looked up, and saw ruined buildings. So... had there been a war? Had there been a downfall of the human race? Maybe something weird, like a giant monster attack or something. She didn't know. Around her were huge chunks of smashed and melted concrete, with iron supports melted across the tops and sides. So at least she knew it was something hot that had definitely happened here. What kind of hot, she didn't know exactly, and it wasn't forthcoming from her memory. She suspected it might come back in time, but didn't know for sure. Her memory was just too fuzzy on aspects of herself.  
  
It was like she'd been picked up from somewhere and dropped down somewhere else, but the transfer had left bits behind. Whether that analogy was correct, she didn't know, but if it was, had the bits that apparently made her whatever she was been left behind on purpose? She shook her head. Only just woken up and she was already seeing menace all around her. She'd lost something. Courage, perhaps? New-found or long-fought-for? She didn't know. She just felt... afraid. Something was wrong. She just couldn't place her finger on it.  
  
She stared upwards into the noon sun. It felt good on her skin; and she realised she had an awful lot of it showing. But she felt no modesty. Whatever she was afraid of, it wasn't being naked. But perhaps she was, and it was just the feel of the sun playing across her skin that conquered it. It felt like she'd been trapped somewhere dirty, a netherworld of pain and torment. Womb of a twisted newborn, as it were, and stepping into the sun was like casting that off and starting a new life.  
  
She chuckled. Without her memories, it was an apt analogy.  
  
But what to do now? A large chunk of the city here seemed to be in ruins, she had no memories, no idea of where she lived or what she did in life, and was naked. The naked problem was soon fixed; with all the ruined buildings, there were a number of fashion stores that had also been destroyed. And while whatever had scoured the area pretty decently - lots of ground-rubble, a few standing walls, but not much else - lots of light objects had survived the destruction. Sheets of paper floated about on thermals, and every so often, a piece of clothing would whip along the ground, caught in a violent atmospheric eddy. She snagged some of the clothes she saw, and quickly build up a wardrobe of odds and ends, including black tights, a red leather miniskirt, and a blue t-shirt that only came down to the top of her stomach. Not for cool weather, but as she wasn't planning on getting out of the sun anytime soon, that was fine.  
  
In the distance, she heard a noise, and turned to face the direction it was coming from. In that direction, the city was whole, more or less, and what she'd heard were helicopters, of all shapes and sizes, heading in to carry out a search for survivors. She snagged a bright red towel that flapped past in a sudden gust of wind, and waved it for all she was worth.  
  
******  
  
No senshi remained. Figuratively speaking, anyway. When the helicopter fleet uncovered the group of people Ranma had saved, they had all let their transformations drop long before. None of the survivors had seen anything more than Akane and Hotaru about that final fight, and no one had seen Ranma. Mitsuki was almost in a catatonic state with a belated bout of claustrophobia, due to her time trapped under the building with Ranma, sitting and rocking with her knees drawn up around her chest. At one point, as Hotaru passed, she whipped a hand out and grabbed the younger girl, stopping her dead. But she hadn't raised her eyes. Hotaru wasn't sure if Mitsuki had been reaching out to give or to receive comfort, but she'd apparently gotten whatever she needed out of the gesture, because since then she'd been reasonably still.  
  
Her silence still worried Hotaru, but she thought the older senshi would get over her ordeal soon enough. She had to have had a will of iron to hold her mind together under all the rubble for as long as she did without having her other personalities cause problems... it made Hotaru give the older woman more respect than she had previously. Even without having multiple personalities, some of them apparently quite destructive, Hotaru would have found it difficult to keep her head while trapped as Ranma and Mitsuki had been. She kept an eye on Mitsuki, though, until the helicopter rescue teams had her strapped in and sedated.  
  
Akane still looked to where Tokyo Tower had stood. Now, there was nothing save a small group of twisted and melted iron girders rising up above the surrounding debris. All that moved were rescue teams and the injured who'd somehow managed to survive the dark blast wave the monster had thrown out before his apparent death. Hotaru stepped up beside her, still uncomfortable, but not so much now they'd stared down the end of the world together from behind the man they both loved. Little things like that brought people together in the weirdest ways, Hotaru reflected; what a pity normal people couldn't be subject to the same trials and tribulations of the hero. Then she quirked a slight smile; just with the problems she'd had over the last year, relationship, physical, evil overlord dominations, she was surprised she'd survived as intact as she had.  
  
She cleared her throat softly, and Akane nodded towards the tower. "There was a helicopter... over there, you know. I don't know if they found him or... not."  
  
Hotaru shook her head. "He's alive. I don't know where, or how, but he is."  
  
"How can you tell?" Akane asked, detached, eyes still locked towards the tower's remains.  
  
"You trained with Ranma, didn't you? Didn't he teach you... how to feel someone by their life force? Their ki?" Hotaru gestured towards the tower. "I feel him, but all I know is he's not over there. I don't know how I know that, I don't know why I think that, but I do know he's alive. It's too strong a feeling... for him to be... dead."  
  
Akane pondered on that for a few minutes as rescuers stepped past them with a small girl in a jester's cotsume on a stretcher. At least, Hotaru assumed she was still wearing the jester's outfit. It was hard to tell under all the gauze and pressure bandages and blankets. If she survived to hospital, it would be a miracle. As the stretcher passed, she trailed a hand along the length of the girl, reaching out, pushing, and the girl, previously in pain, smiled and sunk into a deep sleep. Hotaru slumped groundward to lean up against Akane's legs, completely exhausted. That had been a lot of energy to expend, and in such a fast time. When not transformed, she didn't have the deep reserves Sailor Saturn did, and even though Ranma had been helping her build up her stamina and ki, she still wasn't as strong as she needed to be in a time like this. Too many wounded, too many dying, and Hotaru was helpless to help out. All she could do were small gestures, helping those who might be able to help others.  
  
As the stretcher-bearers got the girl to a waiting helicopter, they were surprised to hear the girl snore. A quick check showed she wasn't suffering anything more than extensive bruising now, which confused them even more. That was the third such case of critically wounded people being miraculously cured of their most grievous wounds in the last hour. Just in case, they placed her into the helicopter and waved the pilot off.  
  
Akane looked down at the young girl. At times, through her pain and jealousy, she could see why Ranma had been drawn to her. No matter what she was like under the surface, she was kind, helpful, and at times, playful. She knew the right things to say, and the right times to say them. Akane couldn't help but hate her, and yet... and yet she knew that for all she loved Ranma, she could never trust him. Instinctively. Something inside her would rebel at the thought of believing him, of trusting him. Intellectually, she knew the things that would happen to him when she confided in him, or got close to him, were just coincidence. Ranma wasn't responsible for everyone else's actions. If Shampoo threw herself at him, it wasn't Ranma throwing her at himself. But some part of her refused to accept that. Whenever it happened... she used it as justification for hurting Ranma more. She'd been thinking on this a lot since he'd broken off their engagement, and she'd had a lot of time to think about it. Kasumi had helped, too, calmly and cheerfully pointing out flaws in Akane's arguments and beliefs when she made them known.  
  
If Akane didn't know better, she'd think Kasumi had come down firmly in Ranma's camp.  
  
It had been that realisation, that single thought, that had brought down Akane's house of cards. There were no camps. All the people who wanted to avenge her honour wanted her hand rather than letting the absent Ranma have it, which meant they weren't acting in her best interests, no matter how angry she was. And she realised that, except for the public manner in which he'd broken up with her, he'd done everything he could have to preserve their friendship. He'd been right. She had problems. She was too violent, too jealous. She didn't think there was anyone else for her, though... Ranma had been the only male in her life, barring her father and the good doctor (a childhood crush, she had realised), who had been inside her barriers. And she just couldn't drop them all. Not yet, anyway. And Ranma couldn't sit around and wait and hope that one day, she *might* be ready for a proper relationship that didn't involve various forms of abuse.  
  
No camps, no sides. These girls had banded around Ranma, she'd seen that in action. But not to protect him from her, but to protect him from threats. Which could include her, but didn't have to be. She realised that now. And she had to tell him. She had to tell him that as much as he was growing up, she'd decided... she'd realised... that she had to as well. She'd ran into a warzone to tell him that, to tell him she understood his problems. Not to beg him back, not to threaten him into returning, but to accept him and his faults, as she had to try to accept hers, in friendship.  
  
She had to admit, they'd make much better friends as friends than as a married couple.  
  
So she stood, and waited. And she could feel him, somewhere, distantly beyond the dust. She, too, couldn't pinpoint him. He was elsewhere. Major Elsewhere. But he was alive.  
  
Akane sat down next to Hotaru, propper the younger senshi up against her. Hotaru, exhausted after the morning's exhertions, fell asleep almost instantly.  
  
******  
  
She sat in the government office, one of maybe a dozen who'd been called in, yet here she sat alone, waiting for her interviewer to arrive. He was late. Everything was late, apparently; the disruption downtown had caused a lot of property and collateral (read: people) damage and everything had broken down. The police were out in force, stopping looting in the inner city, and the JSDF were apparently on standby, if everything she'd heard in the foyer was true. Everyone spoke in whispers for the moment, everyone still shell-shocked. She herself had mostly been silent the last day, only speaking to confirm she could indeed speak japanese, and that no, she didn't know what her name was. She'd been sent to a school hall for the night, bunked down in emergency accomodations for those displaced by the explosion, and then at 6Am this morning, she'd been hauled onto a truck and taken to temporary government offices in Shinagawa.  
  
Apparently, they'd been set up in these offices as a precaution against further explosions - as yet, she hadn't heard what had caused the explosion, only that people kept saying it was big (The explosion? she wondered) - and to spread out support for people displaced or with temporary memory loss. She qualified for the second, and quite possibly the first, too, but she didn't know if she had a house or apartment or not... she could have been running around naked for weeks for all she knew.  
  
Still, she still didn't seem to have any bruises, but she did feel sore still. Movement seemed to lessen the pain now, and she'd woken up before the truck had arrived and ran around the hall a few times. It also helped that it was getting colder - snow wasn't expected to be far away - and she didn't have anything warm to wear. Still clad in what she'd found the day before, she sat, waiting, at the desk. The offices either weren't heated, or no one had bothered to turn on the heaters, for it was chilly.  
  
She had been waiting in the office for an hour by the time the government interviewer arrived, walking in, tucking sunglasses into a pocket inside his jacket. He was immaculately groomed, hair slicked back straight, face clean. He looked fit, which surprised the woman. She had expected government officials to be overweight or otherwise unfit, seeing as they apparently did little all day. But this man looked to be rather handsome, even. He smiled at her as he sat down, but it seemed to be devoid of warmth. Her file was on the desk in front of him, and he looked through it, eyes glancing over reports and photos quickly. Then he closed the file and looked up at her, joining his hands on the table before him.  
  
"So... you claim to have no memory."  
  
"I have a memory," she corrected him, "just nothing I can point to as anything personal."  
  
The man nodded. "A fine distinction. And an important one. Where you were found... is suspicious in itself. Do you know... where you were found?"  
  
She nodded. "Yeah. In a lot of blown-up buildings."  
  
The man grimaced. "You have no idea what happened at that precise point?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"Well... let me just say... it was interesting to read about yesterday. I look forward... to seeing the footage on the news... when television is restored." He patted her file. "Do you know the penalties... for lying to a government official?"  
  
She shook her head again. "I'm not lying!"  
  
"Oh," he continued, "I believe you... when you say you remember nothing about... yourself. But... you must understand the position... this puts me in. We are looking for someone... a terrorist mastermind... who used a weapon of mass destruction on Tokyo yesterday morning, along with... a hallucinagenic." He leaned back in his chair, looking long and hard at the woman sitting opposite him. "No... you're not our... man," he said, finally, then leaned forward again. "So let's start again. I am Sato, and we need to... fix you up with a temporary... identity. Until your memory... returns."  
  
"Has... has this happened a lot?" she asked.  
  
Sato smiled. It wasn't nice. "More than you... might think."  
  
******  
  
And so it was that, a little under an hour later, Kaname Mizuno left the offices, with a small amount of money to buy some new clothes, a temporary office job and a small apartment she could call her own... until she remembered who she was, of course. Clothing came first, as a biting wind had blown up since she'd entered the offices, and she found some warmer leggings, a jacket, hat and a scarf, as well as some clothes for work. After that, there was enough money left to buy a week's amount of food (until she was paid from her new job) and time enough to get to her new home before the sun set and the wind became really cold.  
  
The apartment only had a few rooms: a combination lounge/bedroom, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom, but at least it had hot water, electricity, and a good-sized bath. She felt she could use one, the way her toes felt to be turning blue under her new fleecy boots. She quickly fixed some instant ramen up while water ran for the bath, and once the bath was full, she stopped eating, put the box on the bathroom floor, and peeled clothing from her body. It was damp; not surprising, the way the winds seemed to be carrying moisture everywhere. The fact she was currently standing in a huge cloud of steam didn't escape her, either. She realised she hadn't brought anything clean to wear in with her, but eyed the fluffy towel that had been sitting on the wall railing, and decided not to bother just yet. She dipped a toe into the water, nice and hot, and slid into the bath fully, retrieved her ramen, leant back and continued to eat. There she sat for most of the night, until the water began to chill.  
  
The next morning saw her up bright and early. She had to be at work by 8AM, and she didn't know quite where she was going as yet. It was the Japanese corporate HQ of an American company, according to the small information pack that came with her temporary identity package. Mister Sato had been very nice after the initial quesitoning, pointing out all the little details, telling her that the basic necessary items for living had been bought already and furnished in the apartment, also mentioning the style of dress needed at the office. Not that Kaname knew anything about office work, but she guessed she'd soon find out.  
  
It turned out, when she arrived at the offices half an hour early, that the firm was a software engineering company, and she would be carrying out data entry duties, along with some customer work from time to time. But to start with, she'd be partnered with someone who knew the job, and stepped through the first week until she was considered proficient enough to carry out her tasks without someone standing over her shoulder.  
  
She quickly found out the work wasn't hard. She entered numbers in, over and over, over and over, until her break, at which point she'd come back from a few minutes' rest, and be entering numbers in again and again until the end of the day. She had the job down pat by the end of the first day, and was assisting customers on her second. By her third, she was working fine without supervision.  
  
By her fourth, a bath at night wasn't calming her down as much as it had. So she climbed out after twenty minutes or so, and looked around the small apartment. There was a small television, but there wasn't anything much on the stations yet, mostly it was about the disaster. A few people questioned what kind of hallucinagenic could create a giant monster like those that had rampaged across Tokyo in the 60's and 70's, and early 80's, but as yet, no one had any answers: the samples had defied analysis. What was known was that a small, non-nuclear device had exploded at the Tokyo Tower, and had destroyed nearly everything within three kilometres of ground zero. A lot of the nation's central personnel and economic records had been wiped out, and the country was facing a massive recession unless someone could find a backup copy of the records, somewhere, or other nations stepped in to help ameliorate the problem. Whether anyone could or not, that was another story. And the news was still full of crying people, wanting to know if their loved ones were still alive or not. Photos were shown; this seemed to be the only way survivors could figure out who they were. Too many people, upwards of one or two thousand, had memory loss, just couldn't remember who they were.  
  
Like Kaname.  
  
The news was depressing, though. All these people... a nation in mourning. And in shock. Casualty estimates were in the range of one million, possibly more. There had been time for people to escape, and many had, but the bomb had still caught a great deal of people. There would have been more, if not for the courageous intervention of the heroes Japan still had remaining. It seemed to Kaname there were less and less of them now, as if heroes were a dying breed, and those that were left... those that had fought in Tokyo the other day... were hurt, injured, tired. Depressed.  
  
So Kaname turned from the television to the computer. There was a DVD case lying next to it, a game. The World, the front proclaimed. According to a note scribbled on a post-it on the case, this had already been installed and was the biggest selling computer game in Japanese history. Some forty million people worldwide were supposed to be playing this game, and the case proclaimed "you could be a hero!" in great big writing across the back. Great. A hero. But as she read more into the blurb on the back, Kaname found it was also a social game, where people could go meet others, talk to people. She didn't know if the servers would be up, what with all the disruption to everything else, but she might as well give it a go. The case said all that was required was a computer, which she had, and a VR headset and dataglove. There was a dataglove next to the computer.  
  
And she cast her eyes over at the headset lying next to her bed.  
  
******  
  
The Ai Sou was quiet. Too quiet for some. Ami, who generally liked the dorm on its more quiet days, was a little jumpy. No Ranma, nailing tiles on the roof. No Ranma, cleaning the springs. No Ranma, training them in the morning. And yet, at 6AM every morning, the girls were in their gis, downstairs, outside, running through katas and sparring matches. If their teacher wasn't there, then they would continue to act as if he was. Rei, Makoto and Mitsuki, the three who knew the most martial arts besides Ranma, acted as teachers as and when they could. They all felt bad. Hollow.  
  
Grieving.  
  
A sick feeling in their stomachs, made especially worse when sparring with Hotaru. Even with Mitsuki, who seemed to have settled down a lot in the days since the fight. Nearly a week now. Six days. One more day, and it would be a week proper. There wasn't any university or school at the moment, Tokyo University had been shut down due to blast damage adding to all the damage it had taken over the previous few months, and the high schools had been shut to get more people into the workforce, and try to recover Japan's economy before it went completely bust. According to internet news sites, Ami had been reading that iron refineries had been employing ten year old children for around a thousand yen a day to boost production. That really wasn't good, but then nothing about the current situation was good.  
  
Right now, she was on her computer, IRC window open. The channel she was in was dead, but while she was thinking about how quiet things were, a message window opened up.  
  
Kanrinin Morning, Ami.  
  
Ami smiled. She started typing back, the clicking of the keys comforting her.  
  
Mercurial Good morning, Keitaro. How is Naru?  
  
Kanrinin She's good. She's working in a school at the moment. Troublesome students, so they wanted someone who can handle themselves.  
  
Mercurial She's got her confidence back, then?  
  
Kanrinin She's fine now. We're both fine. I wanted to ask how you were doing, though.  
  
Mercurial I'm fine, Kei-kun.  
  
Kanrinin Don't give me that - I saw the news.  
  
Mercurial It was bad, but I'm fine now.  
  
There was a pause of a few minutes, during which time Ami thought Keitaro had dropped his connection or something - lost connections happened a fair bit lately. But then, he sent a new line.  
  
Kanrinin Can you connect to The World? Since I can't leave the dorm ATM, and it's too much bother for you to come over, I was wondering... did you want to join a party?  
  
Ami pondered. Why not? Some socialising was just what the doctor ordered for a dead Sunday morning. She sent back an affirmative, transformed into Sailor Mercury, and dropped her computer's visor down over her eyes, plugging it into her laptop so she could access the game. Then she waited through the loading screen, finally being logged in and dropped into the game proper.  
  
******  
  
The city reminded Kaname of Venice, or rather, the pictures of Venice she must have seen at some point. She didn't think she'd actually been there, not that she could know for certain, but she thought had she been there, it wouldn't seem as familiar an appearance. The architecture, though, seemed to be almost North African, perhaps Moroccan rather than European. The main street was split in two by a canal, and almost lazily, a long gondola drifted along in whatever current had to be running through the water. Or was programmed into. Kaname wasn't exactly sure of how the game worked, just that it did. This wasn't her first time in, she'd been in several times. But there hadn't really been any people to talk to, then. Oh, lots of people, and everyone was talking, but they all had established friends. It was very... cliquey was the word Kaname wanted to use. People only really talked or interacted with others they'd joined with, or met early on in their online experience.  
  
Of course, most people had insanely weird names, like Ticonderoga or Aeolus. Some went by initials, or combinations of initials or words and numbers, like the Piro416 she'd seen twice now, apparently testing out methods of killing oneself in an online world. Some had names that were japanese, but she suspected that a lot of them played opposite genders to what they really were. Some avatars of players were big, bulky, others small and meek. One girl she'd noticed had a bulky jewellery arrangement adorning her head just above her forehead. The outlandishness of the appearance had drawn kaname to look into her eyes, which were deep and, scarily, empty.  
  
Kaname had used her real name in the character creation section of registration by accident, and so was stuck with the name 'Kaname' whenever anyone profiled her. She'd also missed the concept of 'role-playing' entirely, and picked an avatar with features very close to her own, and only now was kicking herself for not figuring out she could have been a big, strong manly man. Or a "geeked-out technogurl", as she'd heard one player already refer to the girl with empty eyes as.  
  
So here she was, in The World again. she knew the basics, knew what was required to play, the combat, how to join groups, everything else. But she had no one to play it with. Her routine of food in bath, then online play, wasn't doing much different than snoozing in the bath all night long for her relaxation.  
  
A player connected nearby, a youngish-looking man with glasses and a big floppy, pointed hat. He reached up and adjusted it, sighing when it fell back down again, looked up and made eye contact with Kaname.  
  
Wow. Not that he was cute or anything. This was, after all, a game. And Kaname knew he was probably a girl with too much time on her hands anyway, so that killed the rest of any possible romantic or sexual thoughts, of course. It was his stare. If this had been real life, Kaname would have melted at the knees. As it was, she felt her knees wobble slightly under the computer's desk, which through the biofeedback in the dataglove, transferred itself to shaky knees in the game world. Greeeeat...  
  
He started to make his way over, waving amiably. Kaname pulled back a little when she realised he was heading towards her, wondering if this was going to be some kind of cruel joke. But then, she thought. Most players did nothing morally wrong around the Scarlet Knights, and they seemed to be based on the gondola, so she stood her ground as he reached her.  
  
"Hi!" he said brightly. "I haven't seen you around before."  
  
Kaname shook her head. "I'm new. For the last few days, at least."  
  
"Oh, a newbie," he nodded to her. "How are you enjoying the game?"  
  
Kaname looked around dubiously. "No one wants to talk to me."  
  
The man shrugged, and held up a hand. "I'm on my way to the Sun Grass Plains to meet a friend. Want to come along? We'll probably only be talking... but it'll be someone new you can talk to."  
  
She thought about it for all of half a second before nodding. The Sun Grass Plains was considered by the instruction manual to be a fairly basic level for beginners. So basic, in fact, that a lot of players congregated there to talk away from the congestion of the major city networks. "That sounds good."  
  
Kaname followed him towards one of the major Gates from the city, and they chatted lightly until they arrived. There, he lifted his arms and proscribed a quick icon in the air with his staff weapon, but before he gave the code words, he turned to Kaname. "I'm so sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Kanrinin."  
  
She held out a hand, shook his when it was offered in return. "Kaname.  
  
The Sun Grass Plains turned out to be a nice place, full of rolling hills with warm, soft green grass blowing gently in a simulated breeze. The sun was hot, so weird to feel that here, and knowing her body was cold back in her apartment. She blinked idle for a moment to get another blanket and to turn up the heat on the small electric heater she had down on the floor.  
  
There didn't look to be any clouds in the sky, when she returned from idleness, and Kanrinin had moved off a few steps. He glanced back to see if she was coming, heard the blink of player reactivation, and smiled. She nodded, unsure of herself, and followed him again.  
  
Two small hills over, they found the person Kanrinin was looking for. She was tall, with dark blue hair, and wore puffy, almost gauzy, pants and a kind of boob tube made from the same material. She had a staff as well, but a simple shaft of wood, broken up by painted patterns along its length, unlike Kanrinin's, which had a complicated shape resembling a mutant letter 't' trying to eat a shiny yellow sphere affixed to an end. She smiled at her friend, then nodded curiously at Kaname.  
  
"Who's your friend?"  
  
"Mercurial, this is Kaname." Kanrinin gestured at Mercurial to Kaname, and continued the introduction. "And Kaname, this is my friend, Mercurial. Mercury for short." Kaname nodded greetings, slightly embarrassed. She hadn't met too many people yet, in real life as well as online. These two had thus far been the first to not tease or or insult her, and for that she was grateful; she felt, perhaps feeling a little too grateful, but that wasn't something she could fix easliy. Kanrinin, meanwhile, sat down. "So, how are you really?"  
  
Mercurial shook her head. "I'm fine. We lost... we lost a friend that day. Our manager."  
  
Kanrinin nodded. "Ranma. I remember him. He brought Natsumi back. At least... Natsumi said it was him. It was a girl, though."  
  
"That was him," Mercurial confirmed.  
  
Kaname sat down, obviously left out of the conversation for the moment, and started picking flowers and staring at them closely. The detail on everything here was beyond what she thought video games should be able to manage.  
  
"He hasn't been heard of since... since you know."  
  
"Since he... and you... and your friends...? It was obvious, you know. We were all watching the news at the Hinata Sou."  
  
Mercurial shook her head and threw a warning glance at Kanrinin that Kaname only just caught. "He was lost in the Zone, like all the others."  
  
"I was found there," Kaname said, suddenly.  
  
Both turned and looked at her. "What?" Mercurial asked.  
  
Kaname's face grew hot, and she suspected that was being reflected in the game world as well. "In the... you know, the Zone. It's where I woke up."  
  
"Where you... woke up."  
  
"Yeah. I'm one of the, what are they calling us, Amnesiacs. Someone who's forgotten their name and everything."  
  
Mercurial's eyes narrowed as she stared at Kaname. "Where exactly were you found?"  
  
Kaname shrugged. "I don't know. It all kind of looked the same. And it's not like I could remember anything before the explosion, either, but I must have been some distance from it to still be alive."  
  
"... yes," Mercurial muttered.  
  
Kaname thought about it some more. "Although... that Sato guy was saying it was suspicious where I was picked up... so maybe I was around where the bomb went off? And something stopped me from being blown away like the buildings? I don't know. I just feel... I was somewhere before then. I think. Because I was naked when I woke up, you know? And the sun was coming down on me, and I felt warm and everything, even with the wind..." She continued speaking, rapidfire, trying desperately to shut up and stop the looks she was getting from her two new 'friends'. "... and I just felt, with all the sun, like I'd been somewhere dark and evil before then, you know? And I just think maybe there was something there... maybe I was..." she let her voice trail off. Kanrinin was looking at her in slight disbelief, Mercurial in shock.  
  
And then Mercurial reached forward quickly, as if to grab Kaname, and Kaname did the first thing that came to mind.  
  
She disconnected.  
  
Sitting there, in her darkened apartment, she panted. She wasn't scared, no, no she wasn't. She was just... confused. Confused by Mercurial's actions, by their reactions, by their words. It was like she'd walked into a conversation they'd been having -  
  
- and she realised she probably had. Been talking offline or something, and then logged in to continue face to face, as it were. And that Mercurial had probably lost a friend in the bombing, and Kaname's bumbling in had probably brought it all up, seemed like she was teasing. Or something similar, anyway. She felt bad. But looking at the time, there wasn't anything else she could do. She switched the computer off, and watched a little of a weird movie from the 70's called Attack of the Eternal Lesbian Midget, which had a storyline almost as bad as the title (and effects that were much, much worse). When the clock hit midnight, she brushed her teeth, had a drink, and crawled into bed.  
  
******  
  
Days passed quietly for Kaname. After a week, she logged back into The World, left an apology on the BBS for Mercurial and Kanrinin for her behaviour, assured them she hadn't meant any disrespect, and then tried to avoid them. There hadn't been any further communications from either of them, so that was okay by her. But she was still alone.  
  
About the only thing that left was fighting, and Kaname found with a little practise, her character was getting some good stats. In two weeks, she'd lifted her strength five points, endurance five, speed eight, and she'd risen to fourth level. Which meant she could now tackle low-level dungeons by herself, basically. She was working no raising her stats even higher, so she could try some of the medium-level dungeons.  
  
The first day of the fifth week since the incident, it started to snow.  
  
******  
  
It was a Saturday, and Kaname stood in her usual off-work clothing, her tights and a long woolly jacket, on the footpath, staring up into the clouds as the first smattering of snow fell. In her hands, she held her week's shopping in plastic bags. She was able to afford more food now, and had been starting to put on some weight... something hadn't seemed right about that, so after work one afternoon in the third week, she'd found at least an hour every day to work out in a local gym. She seemed to be getting better with much of the training, and that helped stop the pains she was still feeling from time to time. She found her punches felt good, and at least two attendants at the gym had suggested she join the Tae Kwon Do class on Saturday afternoons. She considered it, and accepted. Perhaps it would help her in the World.  
  
She'd been to her first Tae Kwon Do lesson today. She'd stumbled a bit, fumbled some blocks (and ended up with faded bruises), and stubbed her toe, but she'd had a lot of fun. Which reminded her: she had to wash out the training gi that was currently hiding in her backpack when she got home.  
  
But as the snow fell, the first flakes touching the cemented ground, someone screamed.  
  
It wasn't just the first snowfall of the year, it was also the first reported ghost sighting.  
  
******  
  
Kaname saw it, too. It was a man, in a suit. He was pressed up against a wall, which could be seen through his body. He clutched a briefcase in one hand, and was staring with horror in towards the city's centre, where the Tokyo Tower had been until just over a month ago. She didn't know what was going on, but her body screamed at her to do something.  
  
Thankfully, before she could embarrass herself any further than taking up a defensive stance, the ghost faded away. She turned, looked where he had been looking, and saw the various cranes that had gone up for the reconstruction effort. One of the landmarks opposite looked familiar, though, and with a jarring start, she found herself, naked, back where she'd woken up. Looking north from there, she'd seen the exact same landmark from the exact same angle. Wherever she had been found, it was indeed in that direction.  
  
******  
  
She dreams.  
  
It is black, where she is. But for the moment, she dreams. She knows there are figures moving around her, touching her, doing things to her, but where they're touching, she can't see, what they're doing, she can't understand. Something is covering her eyes. Like a blindfold, but harder.  
  
The one she knows is the Darkest touches her, and she screams.  
  
******  
  
Sweating profusely, Kaname didn't want to turn on the light. She had to tell herself it was just a bad dream. She was dreaming.  
  
But the sense of evil was profound in that dream.  
  
It reminded her of the feeling of being born from a dark place, from an evil place. A womb of darkness.  
  
She wouldn't turn the light on. Because she knew the light would chase away the shadows, but they would wait, ever at bay, waiting for the day the light flickered, and died...  
  
And as the person caught in the middle of the war between light and dark, she couldn't afford to be afraid of either side. So the light stayed off. And Kaname shivered all through the night in her warm apartment.  
  
******  
  
Sunday morning in the Ai Sou started like any other recent Sunday morning. Makoto was up before dawn, readying a breakfast, then as the first rays of the sun shone above the nearby peaks, she left the kitchen, tying her gi up as she joined the other girls coming down the stairs and heading for outside. Mostly, they were wide awake and ready. Usagi, as was usual for these training sessions, was yawning and not really awake.  
  
That fact was made most evident when she invariably walked into a wall or a support pillar.  
  
Outside, the snow on the ground had risen to halfway up to the girls' ankles, and it made several wish they'd decided to train indoors during winter. But no matter now. They ran through their warm-ups, practised a few basic moves as a group, and then shifted into higher gear, transforming into their senshi forms and laying into one another with whatever moves they could think of. Sundays were special training days. Not having to go to work, or school, for those very few that still were able to attend, meant they could cut loose for a day and give each other a run for their money. Punches and kicks weren't pulled, bodyslams and tackles were de rigour, and the occasional headbutt wasn't unheard of.  
  
Of course, in the full-contact sparring, the idea was to use as many combinations of the martial arts they were learning and the magic they knew about, and so quite often, after lunchtime on Sundays was designated clean-up time.  
  
But the period from the end of weekend training, around 10AM, until 2PM, was considered free time, and everyone tried as best they could to relax.  
  
Ami would log into The World or chat with friends on IRC while reading medical texts, Minako would either go shopping for a few hours or discuss boys with Usagi, Rei would meditate or spend time in the hot springs, Makoto would cook up lunches in advance for the next week, as well as breakfasts and try to prepare as much in relation to dinners as she could. Usagi would phone Mamoru and gossip. Mitsuki would take another pill and lie down, or go up to the roof and stare at the sky. Sometimes, Hotaru would join her, but more often than not, Hotaru would go and lie in Ranma's room.  
  
Not on his bed, because after five weeks, his smell was slowly fading from the room, and the futon where he slept was all that was holding any memory of him anymore. She would lie there, remembering the times they had. Sometimes, she would see Akane Tendo in the city. They'd have a small meal, and exchange smalltalk, and then they'd part. They weren't friends, but both were trying hard to be.  
  
Mostly, they came together to commiserate over their shared loss.  
  
This particular Sunday, though, Hotaru was just in the dorm, on her own bed. She wasn't crying, but her eyes felt as if she might as well be: big, stuffy, watery. Just staring at the ceiling. She could see him, she realised. Sitting there, her head in his lap, him stroking her hair...  
  
"Cheer up," he said.  
  
She frowned. "Sempai..."  
  
"I'm not dead. See? I couldn't be here if I was." That cocky, self-sure smile. It infuriated her right now. She wanted to punch him, but he just kept smiling.  
  
It wasn't the same smile now, though. Now it was kind of sad, longing. Maybe she was projecting her own feelings on him, though, reading into his actions and emotions what she herself thought and felt right now. Maybe.  
  
His hands... were warm. His eyes... full of life. And something else. Love? Something like that. He continued to stroke Hotaru's hair, then pulled his other hand down to stroke at her face, from cheek to chin... she closed her eyes, enjoying the sensations, letting them guide her to a place where this moment wouldn't end. They moved down her chin, down her neck... parted the front of her shirt, and slipped a warm, careful hand inside. "Sempaiiiii..." The hand moved lower, hesitating as it found she wasn't wearing anything under her shirt. It examined her curves, traced out her ribs, before coming up underneath one of her breasts, and followed the curves up, fingertips lightly tracing over her skin. It was exciting enough to give her goosebumps all over, and to bring something else out.  
  
Which was when someone knocked on her door, startling her out of her reverie.  
  
"Hotaru-chan?"  
  
Ami. Oh god. Hotaru's hand leapt from her shirt, which she pulled together with one hand, blushing furiously before giving up on that idea and grabbing her pillow to hold in front of her. At least it felt like she was hugging someone... "Yes?" she answered.  
  
The door slid open, and Ami entered. She seemed very unsure of herself, wringing her hands together as she stepped inside.  
  
"What's the matter?"  
  
Ami shrugged, and looked about for a few moments before returning to the girl hiding behind the pillow on her bed. "It's about Ranma," she said, finally.  
  
Hotaru perked up somewhat. "Have you found him?"  
  
"No," Ami shook her head. "I haven't. But I... I think I might know someone who MIGHT have been in the area where Ranma was... lost. Someone... I think you have to see."  
  
"Everyone that close was killed." Hotaru lowered her eyes. "Everyone was. Ranma wasn't, though," she added, distracted.  
  
"Perhaps he wasn't. This woman had lost her memory. She is one of these Amnesiacs we've heard about on the news." Ami looked away again. "I haven't talked to her in nearly a month, but I've continued to do some digging. There's not much information there. I know she's female, she's around Ranma's height and weight, and was processed by the government as one of those who temporarily lost their memories."  
  
"I think that's weird," Hotaru said, suddenly.  
  
"Weird?" Ami replied, caught on the back foot.  
  
"All these people who 'temporarily' lost their memories," Hotaru continued. "Have you heard of any of them regaining them yet? I haven't..."  
  
"Anyway, I've noticed that she usually logs on to The World around this time on a Sunday... and I was wondering if you wanted to perhaps talk with her?"  
  
******  
  
Kaname wandered The World, for some reason back in the Sun Grass Plains. The grass had grown longer, almost as if the seasons here were deliberately out of whack with the real world. Or perhaps the servers were in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons were all backwards. Kaname snorted; north and south were such arbitrary designations... the southern hemisphere could very well be the up-direction, rather than the northern. She shook her head, but nothing changed in it. The weather here seemed determined to throw off her concentration.  
  
It was while traipsing over one of the low hills that she heard the beep in her ear of a BBS message. A quick check showed a new message, from someone using the avatar name 'GodSaturn', wanting to meet there, in the plains, where she'd met up wtih that Mercurial and Kanrinin a month earlier. The message went on to talk about how the player had known someone who'd vanished possibly in the area where Kaname had been found, and just wanted to discuss some things. Kaname was a little wary, but decided meeting this person couldn't hurt.  
  
She arrived where she'd sat and talked with the two players previously, and found a youngish-looking girl sitting there. She was dressed in a combination of white and purple, with purple hair, bows on her shoulders where sleeves normally would have been attached, and knee-high boots. A long bladed staff weapon lay at rest beside her. She appeared to be looking around for someone, so Kaname guessed this was the girl who'd messaged her.  
  
"GodSaturn?" she queried. The girl's eyes focussed on her. Intense stare, almost hopeful... strange... that for someone appearing so young, she could have a stare of ages-old strength. Although, Kaname reasoned, since everything in The World was simulated, there was no reason expressions of the players couldn't be exaggerated by the server's software, so as to make them more noticeable on lower-spec systems, or over longer distances. The same way as animated characters were often exaggerated so as to appear as recognisable caricatures, stereotypes, of types of people or animals, she assumed. But then, perhaps the player really did have The Stare Of The Ages. Who could know for certain?  
  
"Yes... you'd be Kaname, correct?" the girl asked. She nodded in response to her own question, eyes travelling up and down Kaname's body. Kaname felt strangely self-conscious, and struggled to repress a blush at the attention. It was a battle, but she thought she'd won it. "Mercurial suggested I talk to you."  
  
"Why?" Kaname couldn't help but asking. As sono as her suspicions were confirmed, she knew she should have left, disconnected, SOMETHING. Something kept trying to pull her away from her past, and she had a suspicion that these people, whoever they were, might have been able to help her - somehow - in recovering her past. She wasn't sure she wanted to know anything, because while she knew what she was now, she didn't want to find out she'd been some kind of super-criminal in a previous life, a technohacker of the worst sort, involved with shady dealings with evil creatures from an alternate dimension.  
  
Quite why that theory kept popping up in her head at the strangest moments wasn't clear to her, and rediculous as it was, she couldn't easily dismiss the firm belief of the surviving population of Tokyo that there had been a giant monster that wasn't Gojira, or any of the others on Sogal Island. In fact, most of the public had a hard time that a hallucinagenic device could cause such a standardised illusion, while the various experts who'd spoken on the subject in public had said it also had more to do with mass hysteria in combination with the gas used, and witnesses "remembering" details after the fact.  
  
The point that nearly everyone in Japan had seen the attack live on television was quietly ignored.  
  
GodSaturn continued to eye her, until just as Kaname had decided she was idle, or not going to speak in any case, and was about to leave, she shook her head. "I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on what happened to a friend of mine."  
  
Kaname shook her head in turn. "I don't know nothing about anything before the... the explosion. All I remember is..." and now she did blush, "finding myself lying naked on crumbled concrete and melted steel. That's my earliest memory."  
  
GodSaturn kept staring. It was making Kaname very uncomfortable, and her finger in the real world shifted to hover over the disconnect button on her keyboard. But then, the girl smiled, warmly, genuinely. It looked to be something she didn't do often, and came across as more special because of that. "I'm sorry if I offended you, Kaname. I had hoped you might have seen something, considering where you were found."  
  
"How did you know where I was -"  
  
"But it's just a coincidence that where you were found was where... where my boyfriend disappeared." GodSaturn shrugged. "I didn't mean to suggest that you... might be lying or hiding anything. I understand... how hard it can be to be a new person, almost, after living another life that you're not aware of."  
  
There was that ancient stare again, delivered in eyes that seemed to be finding Kaname attractive. What was this, Attack of the Eternal Lesbian Midget? GodSaturn cocked her head to one side, almost suggestively, and then smiled disarmingly again.  
  
"I'm sorry. You just look a bit like a girl I knew once." She gestured around at other players. "Although that could be because I think they use a basic character set, and it's all decals and scaling that let's people play different-looking characters." GodSaturn shrugged again, and stood. "It's been nice meeting you, Kaname. I'd like to get to know you a little better - I guess with losing your memory, and having to start over again, you haven't got many friends?" Kaname shook her head. "Well, then, perhaps I can help fix that problem."  
  
******  
  
And so Kaname found herself later that afternoon sitting at an instant ramen wagon across from a mostly undevastated park, two blocks from the region of central Tokyo that had become known as the Zone. As she ate her way through a second bowl of beef ramen, someone cleared their throat behind her. She turned, and found a short girl who looked similar to GodSaturn, if only the avatar's hair had been black rather than purple, who had that same intense stare the avatar had held. After a few moments of being subjected to The Stare, as Kaname was starting to think of it, the girl let up and smiled. With that break in tension, Kaname realised the girl wasn't alone: she had several older women with her, who looked to be more Kaname's age. Two of the three were staring at Kaname, the third was staring at a fold-up map and complaining to the others that they were in fact two streets away from where they wanted to be. Then she looked up in the silence, saw Kaname, and her voice trailed off.  
  
"Oh shit," she said faintly.  
  
Kaname frowned, got up off her stool, and felt her body ready to make a quick getaway if something went wrong. Nothing did immediately, though. GodSaturn stepped forward and held out her hand. "Hi. I'm Hotaru, Hotaru Tomoe. This is Mitsuki Matsuda," she gestured to the woman who'd swore and was now desperately trying to hide behind a raven-haired woman as she folded the map up, "Rei Hino," a wave at the woman with long black hair that this Mitsuki was hiding behind, "and Ami Mizuno."  
  
"Really?" Kaname couldn't help perking up at that. "We've got the same last name! Or rather," she corrected herself quickly, "for the moment we do. Mine's only temporary."  
  
"You did say you were one of the Amnesiacs," Ami offered.  
  
Kaname noticed that, while Ami and Hotaru had stopped staring, Rei and, surreptitiously, Mitsuki hadn't yet stopped. "Uh... is something..."  
  
"You just look like... the person we're trying to find," Ami jumped in quickly.  
  
Giving Hotaru a weird stare, Kaname replied, "GodSaturn said it was her boyfriend that... OHHH... he's... yeah... okay..." She felt herself blush. Hotaru slid her eyes to look elsewhere. It was so natural looking, that Kaname almost missed the faint blush on the girl's alabaster skin.  
  
"It's... hard to explain," was all she offered by way of explanation. But instead of explaining, she shifted the conversation ever so slightly to a different subject. "You didn't see anyone else when you woke up?" Kaname shook her head. "Oh well. It was a long shot." Kaname got The Stare again, but the smile that followed brushed away any sneaking suspicions she had that this girl was inferring Kaname herself was this girl's boy... girl... partner. "He'll turn up, sooner or later."  
  
"Did he dye his hair?" the one called Mitsuki whispered to Rei, not quiet enough for Kaname to miss, but she did miss Rei's reply. She fingered her hair that she'd tied back that morning into a ponytail off her crown, then grabbed at one of the bangs she had framing her face, and checked that. No, it was still the bright copperish-red it had been since she'd woken. She had to figure that these girls may have known her, or something who looked similar to her, before the attack, but weren't saying for whatever reason. She nodded silently to herself, noting this down for future ruminations in the bath, and decided she wouldn't forget the use of gender. Maybe they were talking about a brother of hers or something? Or maybe -  
  
- no, the girl Hotaru had said already that he was her boyfriend, not Kaname's. Maybe they were kinky or something, though?  
  
Her brain refused to cope with the thinking of her past, and so it all slid off into where she could bring it up at a later time and think on it at her own pleasure. Instead, Hotaru touched her elbow, and gestured towards the park. "Come, sempai, let's go sit and... talk."  
  
She sounded awfully formal, like it was something she'd been practising for days, weeks even. Maybe she had. From just a few of the things spoken in The World, and here in real life, Kaname had a sneaking suspicion that someone in their group had been keeping tabs on her, or at the very least, doing some serious digging into her life. She didn't know for sure, but they had apparently already seen her picture, judging by the fact that they had all thought she looked like this man they were missing before they met, so she guessed someone had been following her. Possibly that Ami, who, although shorter and with a duller hair colour, was very likely Mercurial, had been investigating her to see if she might know anything she could pass on to Hotaru.  
  
The park had emptied of people, and considering the snow that was still only lightly drifting down, Kaname couldn't blame them. It was cold, even in her new thicker, patterned leggings and fleecy jacket. Hotaru busied herself wiping snow off one of the benches, and unfolded a blanket from her small backpack to spread for them to sit on. The others drifted away to various areas of the park, and if Kaname didn't know better, she'd swear they were commandoes, taking up positions where they could discreetly observe the people around the park as well as the meeting. Quite why they would do that, Kaname didn't know, but the three girls were fairly unobtrusive and blended in well, each taking up what looked to be a different hobby or action to look occupied: Ami found a reasonably concealed place to read and watch two streets, Rei alternated between meditating and practising what looked like movie fighting styles, and Mitsuki... she set about building a group of snowmen. or snowwomen, judging by the skirts and curves each displayed as she continued. Of the three, she was the one who most kept an eye on Kaname, as if considering saying something profound but hesitating because she thought it would come stupid.  
  
Hotaru started the smalltalk, and it seemed the talk went on for much longer than the hour that passed on Kaname's watch. They talked about work, about school, friends, life, love, hobbies, politics, religions, history, economics, war, peace, and almost anything that seemed to pop into Hotaru's mind. Kaname couldn't follow the conversation half the time - at one point, they were talking about pets, cats in particular, and the next - magical girls in sailor suits. Kaname guessed that was a reference to some anime, judging by Hotaru's age, and began talking about Gatekeepers, of which she thought she'd seen an episode of at some point in her past, but wasn't certain. Hotaru changed the subject again to astronomy, and started talking about planets.  
  
When they were finished, Hotaru seemed strangely unsatisfied, and Kaname was completely lost. But the younger girl smiled, and patted Kaname's hands. "I'm sure your memory will come back, Kaname. Don't try to force it."  
  
"I'm not forcing it," Kaname replied, shaking her head. "I'm not even sure that I want to remember."  
  
"Why not?" Hotaru asked.  
  
"I don't know. I just... have problems when I try to think about it. It's like... it's not there. Like *I'm* not there. That, to all intents and purposes, I was born in that rubble, that I... didn't exist before then."  
  
The girl nodded understanding, and that ageless look came into her eyes again. "Perhaps that's the case, Kaname Mizuno. Perhaps you didn't exist before the monster. Maybe something happened in that final confrontation that birthed you fully into this world, whereas before... you hadn't existed. Or at least, maybe not yet." She smiled again, that smile that warmed something in Kaname's heart. It was the smile one gave to a loved one, she understood instinctively, although she hadn't ever had any prior experience of it. That sad, simple statement that one wasn't alone. Kaname's heart reacted to it, not, she felt, because of lust or love, but because it seemed to mean that there was someone Kaname could turn to, someone she could truly call a friend, rather than the cardboard cutouts at work and the pixels of light dancing on her retinas in The World.  
  
Not that she had any friends at either place, but still...  
  
Hotaru said, "Would you like to meet again?"  
  
Kaname found herself agreeing.  
  
******  
  
"Everything is proceeding according to plan," Umiko announced, sweeping into Yoshihiro's new chambers. The battlecruiser had been partly disassembled so as to fit quarters into the existing sewer-base structure for the various youma under Yoshihiro's command and control, and also to mount some of the command systems into his new chambers. Communications crystals lined one wall, observation monitors and one large screen split down the middle dominated the next. The large screen showed two views of Tokyo, one full of people, full of life, hustle and bustle, the other showed a construction site, building in a large, kilometres-wise empty depression of earth. A new city rising up from the ashes of the old.  
  
"The hyperdimensional engines stand ready?" Yoshihiro asked from the workstation he currently occupied, watching lines and lines of computer code scroll past. It was written in the language of the Mercury Librariums, scrolling vertically in glyphs as well as symbols ripped from Earth cultures of times long since past, and cast patterns on Yoshihiro's face as they scrolled by.  
  
"The last connections were made a few minutes ago," Umiko confirmed. "Is there... to be a test?"  
  
The blond man glanced up from his monitor. "How do you test opening a door? Or rather, reopening? It was done once, long ago, when Beryl led our armies and the balance was made. But... Serenity changed all that."  
  
Umiko considered this for a moment, nodding, then asking, "You're a newborn, with the knowledge of the age of Might and Grace... and it often seems like you speak from experience."  
  
Yoshihiro shrugged, returned to his viewing of the code. "There are some things... that transcend human thinking. I'd have thought by now -"  
  
"I realise this. I wasn't querying, Master, just commenting." She added a slight wry tone to her voice. "In quiet awe."  
  
"Heh. Tell the workers... as soon as our basic patterns in Tokyo are complete... we will reopen the doorways."  
  
Umiko nodded, and made to leave. On the threshold, she paused, hand on the doorframe, and she looked back in. "You know... reopening this door..."  
  
"Will leave the senshi unable to open the other. They don't know of its existance... they don't know it's importance... and Serenity opened the door we are about to first; this poor imitation of her mother has no moral high ground here." Yoshihiro gave a small sneer before beginning his work again. This time, Umiko took that as a sign of dismissal, and left.  
  
******  
  
"-gawa, there are more reports of these apparent ghosts from reliable sources. Government experts say there is no such phenomena, and that people are only experiencing after-effects of the noted hallu-"  
  
Click.  
  
"My Daimyo, no! How dare you raise a hand against Piitsu, your childhood friend! He only kissed your concubine Jubei because he truly believed you had given your blessing to their union! I, your loyal assassin Akane, now know this to be undeniable truth! You yourself must commit ritual suicide, else you will die by my -"  
  
Click.  
  
"-ment says the recent spate of apparitions in and around Tokyo's central districts are, literally, nothing."  
  
Click.  
  
"- honour and justice, I, the Green Helmeted Cyclist, shall give you a whipping with my broken chain you will not forget! And even if you do, the grease and oil stains won't come -"  
  
Click.  
  
"Shinji, you idiot, *don't* show Hikari your collection of nose gobl-"  
  
Click.  
  
"-iet formally authorised the opening of the Government's Office for Trade and Tariffs today, in downtown Yokoh-"  
  
Click.  
  
"Silverbolt, she's *just* in stasis lock?"  
  
click.  
  
"-sters don't exist. What about the so-called Monster Island? Please. How many children worldwide really believed there was an island called Jura-"  
  
Click.  
  
Static filled the screen of the television in the small governmental office, where Agent Sato currently sat. His fingers were steepled under his nose as he considered the news items. Five and a half weeks after the event, and he was no closer to finding his quarry. He'd come close, he was sure, but... there were things that seemed to be working against him. He was sure he'd interviewed the man called Ranma already, but whether he was in his male or female form, he hadn't yet found anyone who looked, smelt, acted and reacted and thought like Ranma did. The closest was a girl, back on the day after the event, and he'd had her followed for a few weeks. Agent Ito hadn't turned up anything, except a chance encounter with one of the suspected enemies from Kanagawa in the online role-playing game, The World.  
  
Sato smirked at the coincidence.  
  
But that was all that incident had been, also. There had been no direction, nothing. She had just started talking to someone, followed him, and talked. This... Kaname Mizuno... had been talking to another Mizuno.  
  
He leaned back in his chair, wondering whether he'd named her Mizuno unconsciously because of the possible connection to his... rather advanced expertise? But no, he discarded that idea. It was just coincidence, even here in Tokyo. He smiled at that thought. Things surprised him all the time, since Yoshihiro had freed him from his previous existance. He took some small joy in knowing things weren't always guided by rules, regulations, laws of physics. And yet, he did like some things to stay the same. He wanted to be the strongest in Tokyo; now he was. And forever more would he be.  
  
At least, until the Master was finished with his constructions, and then... well... then it would be a completely different game. New rules to learn, new players to push around. Sato was looking forward to it.  
  
Still, that didn't help him in his search. Investigating the ghosts had turned up nothing of interest, either. No Agent could make it to the scene before the ghost had faded, and no evidence of it remained. Which, as one could guess, amde investigating them incredibly hard. No Agent had yet been around when one had appeared, and Sato had them combing the city. If the Government was going to rein in the free elements in the city, then all variables had to be accounted for. Humans were easy to control. Youma could be accounted for. The senshi and the other heroes, most of whom had faded immediately back into the everyday hustle and bustle of japanese life in the confusion of the rescue mission to the Zone, were the biggest threat to the stability of the city. Stability was important, very important, as it would allow control to be exerted over the populace, which would in turn provide the Master with all the energy he needed when his constructions were complete.  
  
It wouldn't be too much longer, and there wouldn't be any surprises left. But Sato would deal with that when the time came.  
  
******  
  
"Thank you greatly, Shibby-chan, I owe you one," Kaname murmured into her headset as she finished typing in a thirty-character long password someone had most likely accidentaly put in as the new password to the new user access setup commands, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out how someone typed thirty characters twice. So she'd very nciely rung up Shibaru in tech support, and asked him sweetly to hack into the system and retrieve the new password for her.  
  
He'd done so, and she was grateful. Having to set new trainees up in the system seemed to be her latest ongoing task, and while the system had been working fine an hour ago when she'd last added someone to it, now it seemed to have been altered. She frowned, but activated a new account. When the next screen flashed up, she couldn't quite stifle her gasp of surprise.  
  
"What?" Asuka, the new user, asked from the chair across from Kaname. She couldn't see the monitor. "Is something wrong?"  
  
No, nothing was wrong, Kaname wanted to say. And technically, nothing was. All Asuka Hayashi's details were already on the screen. Every last one of them was completely correct, as far as Kaname could tell. And that worried her. Kaname knew Asuka wasn't on the system, or shouldn't have been, and yet, here she was. What was going on? Some kind of computer glitch? She pulled the headset's microphone closer to her lips. "Shibaru, are you still there?"  
  
"Waiting to collect my prize," he replied.  
  
"Have you... have you done anything to the system?"  
  
"No. Why?"  
  
"Are you sure you got the correct password? I mean, really sure?"  
  
"What's the problem?"  
  
"Oh, nothing. I've just gone to input a new user, who's not on the system..."  
  
"Which was why you asked me to hack out the new password, yes, your point?"  
  
"And all her details were already *on* the system..."  
  
"Kinda a digital deja vu, huh?"  
  
"Is everything all right?" Asuka interjected. Kaname nodded, and quickly wrote down a user name and password as was given in the open file on her monitor. She needed to think, and she couldn't so long as she had Asuka standing there still. She handed the card to the young woman, who thanked her and left to be directed to her new cubicle.  
  
"Shibby-chan, are you sure everything's okay with the system?"  
  
Shibaru was silent, but she could hear something in the background. It sounded like he'd taken his headset off to go look at something else for a moment, and she could hear snatches of the conversation.  
  
"What do you mean, the system's -"  
  
"- like it is, man, like a -"  
  
"- worm? Trojan? Give me something to work -"  
  
"I dunno, man, it's just some kind of massive surge -"  
  
Kaname's monitor went blank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw other people react to their monitors blanking out, too. Power surge, she guessed, judging by what she was listening to. Except she didn't even have to look up to know the lights hadn't so much as flickered, and her harddrive's quiet purr under the desk didn't stutter, either. Something was up.  
  
Something was. A moment later, her screen flickered back to life, with a pixelated pair of eyes. Twin bands of blue capped top and bottom of the screen, and the eyes looked...  
  
... familiar...  
  
... something she knew...  
  
... someone she knew...  
  
"This is a Streaming Freedom Video hack. It will last exactly twenty seconds, and cannot be traced. So don't even try. You have been led astray by forces beyond your comprehension. Dark evils from the dawn of time have conspired to make slaves of you all and utilise your... oh bugger," said the eyes, before the monitor went black again.  
  
"What the hell was that?" Kaname heard clearly over her headset from tech support. "Is Hiroshi at home again? I swear, if he hacks us one more time -" Whatever was said by the other person cut him short. "Oh," he said, eventually. "I, uh, didn't... shit... I didn't know." He came back to the headset shortly after. "Sorry, everything went screwy down here."  
  
"I heard."  
  
"No, I mean... not just here. We had system malfunctions like yours reported to us all of a sudden from seventeen terminals on eight different floors. And then there was this video transmission..."  
  
"We saw that. I think everyone did on this floor."  
  
"Anyone you recognise?" Shibaru asked, hopefully.  
  
Kaname shook her head, then smiled. Not that Shibaru could see. "No, no, but it did seem familiar... I don't know what it was."  
  
"Probably some bored role-playing freak hacker off The World. I mean, you know the nutjobs who play that game... I'm sure you know some..."  
  
Yeah, me, Kaname thought silently. She said nothing of the sort, though. Shibaru was kind of cute. "Perhaps, but I'd have thought hackers would go after something really big and powerful. The government, the JSDF, the banking industry. I mean, we're unimportant."  
  
"Are we?" Shibaru gave a short bark of a laugh. "We've got computers that can predict the future now," he added, and Kaname could imagine the huge grin on his face. "Doesn't that make us important?"  
  
"I guess so," Kaname found herself grinning back. "I've gotta get back to work. Talk to you later, okay?"  
  
"Okay." Shibaru hung up, and Kaname found herself sighing contentedly.  
  
******  
  
But that night, she was in The World again, hacking (in the original meaning of the word) through hordes of Gob-Goblins, tiny mouths on legs that had a nasty bite. As she swung her sword into the last of them, she felt the important news vibration go off in her helmet. She'd levelled up. Great, she smiled. Higher stats again. More health, more strength, more agility. No more speed. That sucked a little. But she had a bonus to strike with her sword now, and an extra parry option. Next level, she'd heard, would be a new powered-up attack. More cool combat options. But done now, for the moment, she decided to take a break and glance at the BBS before heading into the next section. A quick flick into idle mode let her drop to the shell menu, and from there, it was only waiting a few seconds for the subject headers to pop up.  
  
203 new messages in 43 new topics since you last logged in.  
  
Nice, she thought.  
  
1 Has anyon3 3ls3 s33n that cat PC? (87 replies, 401 views)  
  
2 $ucks to be BUU! (2 replies, 837 views, locked thread)  
  
3 Sidekick seeks Magical Girl, serious enquires only (1 reply, 1032 views, locked thread)  
  
Ah, Kaname snickered softly to herself. Some poor deluded fool thinking he - most likely a he, anyway, thinking of getting all those panty shots so many shows *just* miss out on giving - might be in with a chance, with the recent devastation of the ranks of heroes in and around Tokyo. Poor guy, doomed to a lonely life consisting of instant ramen, alone in a small apartment with no friends, and never having had a girlfriend...  
  
She noticed his handle - Shibby - and decided instead to keep reading rather than dwell on the noble individual pining for world peace and a tender loving relationship.  
  
7 Welcome to Sogal Island! (90 replies, 1701 views)  
  
8 Ranma, come home! (0 replies, 5 views)  
  
9 Anyone else have weird computer glitches today? (17 replies, 5000 views)  
  
That one looked interesting, so Kaname clicked on it. Skimming quickly, she saw that more people than those in her office building had suffered weird computer glitches around the same time of the day as she had. No one had seemed to have information yet to be entered already entered, but people had had games generate spontaneous storylines and characters, some word processing programs decided only to show Mandarin on the screen, but print in Arabic, one or two had exploded, and yet others had started singing some song called "Daisy Daisy", to which the last reply had been an ROFLMAOUIPMGO.  
  
Kaname wasn't sure what that was, but her stab in the dark came out at 'rolling on the floor laughing my ass off until I puke my guts out', or something similar. She didn't get the reference, so just added a little story about her day at the office, including the "evil" hacker who'd infected the systems with his presence moments afterwards, and was now the butt of many a joke in the office - who gives themselves twenty seconds to say something they need much more to get out?  
  
When she quit browsing the BBS, ready to go back and fight some more Gob-Goblins, Kaname jumped. She wasn't alone anymore. Sitting around her idle form were Mercurial, GodSaturn and a couple of other people. They hadn't yet realised Kaname was back active again and were talking among themselves.  
  
"Are you sure he's not Ranma?" asked one of the two newcomers.  
  
"NemesisAngel, we've explained this offline."  
  
"I just don't get it. How can he *not* be Ranma? I mean, you've seen him, he *looks* like Ranma! He sounds like Ranma! I'd bet if I threw a punch at him, he'd -"  
  
GodSaturn's voice was quiet and calm, and it silenced everything. "Ranma isn't present. He's... gone for the moment. I don't know where. I don't know why. I don't know how. He's just not... here. In the real world. I don't know where he is, but I do know he's alive. I can... I can feel him."  
  
"We know," complained the second newcomer, shifting into a parody of GodSaturn's voice. "Oh, seeeeeeempaaaaai, that feeeeeels so good..."  
  
"Oh, shut up, Venus," GodSaturn mumbled. "Like you'd never - Oh! Hello. Welcome back to the land of the living."  
  
Kaname eyed GodSaturn, who was in the midst of a fierce blush. "Hi. Uh, what are you all doing here?"  
  
Mercurial shrugged. "We logged in together - you know Mitsuki," she pointed to NemesisAngel, who looked subtly embarrassed and glanced down at her feet, "and this is Venus, who you haven't met -" The blond with them smiled flirtatiously at Kaname and curtsied politely. "And we saw you online and decided to join you, see if you wanted some company. When we got here, though, we -"  
  
"- Were idling, so you sat down to wait," Kaname finished, nodding. "Company's fine... I think... so long as the conversation doesn't get *too* personal... I don't know you girls and I just keep walking in at the wrong moments, I think."  
  
GodSaturn blushed deeper. She mumbled something that sounded like, "I didn't *do* anything..." but Kaname couldn't be too sure. The four girls surrounding her stood, and followed as Kaname strode to the doorway into the next section.  
  
No more Gob-Goblin hordes were to be found, but instead, there were a trio of huge evil Nagallamas that slithered from cracks in the walls, firing off sonic honks. Mercurial spun her staff to create a small vortex forcefield, and the worst of the sonic honks were deflected into the walls around the group; what got through was enough only to disorientate the party.  
  
NemesisAngel unslung her sword from her back and growled, incoherently, leaping at one of the Nagallamas and taking a mighty swing. The attack decapitated the Nagallama, and it fizzled into a cloud of pixels before vanishing, as GodSaturn thrust her bladed weapon at another. The blade slid deep into the Nagallama's chest cavity, and then with all her strength, she pulled the weapon upwards, taking with it a whole mess of dissolving pixels as the dying beast vanished. Kaname took on the third, and moved too slow to avoid a second sonic honk. It grazed her right arm, and numbed it to her control. She switched her sword over to her left hand, but it felt wrong. She'd built the character up to be right-handed like she was, and so there was a corresponding loss of precision and control with weapons held in the left for her character.  
  
With the group behind her, she found herself nervous. Before, she'd played in The World by herself, not joining parties because she couldn't rely on anyone else, couldn't trust anyone else. Now she was part of a group, and they'd shown her what they were capable of - now it was her turn to show them.  
  
Too bad that put a lot of pressure on her, and she didn't handle pressure too well.  
  
There was a shimmer in front of her, and something warped in - a person, she thought, looking male from behind but she couldn't be sure from her angle. His clothing was weird, outdated, and he struck a pose Kaname recognised from her few Tae Kwon Do lessons. She stopped still for a moment, then moved into the position herself. The transparent PC in front of her made a kick, which she copied, and she leapt at the top of the kick, like he was doing, brought her other foot up, kicked the Nagallama in the chin before flipping right over and landing, facing the creature head-on while it staggered backwards from the kick. The PC thrust with his left arm, and Kaname did the same, her sword biting deep into the Nagallama before she withdrew it.  
  
But it wasn't dead yet. It reared back, and fired another sonic honk at her. Kaname saw this happening as in slow motion, and managed to dodge most of the strike by again following the PC, who had spun off to the left. Once clear of the shot, he planted a foot and threw himself back into a ran forwards, left arm held trailing. Kaname copied him, move for move, as he cut back across the Nagallama, cut close to the beast's left side, and raised her sword arm and let the blade slide through the creature's flesh. Pixels blasted from the wound, but it wasn't yet enough to kill it. The Nagallama's tail swept up and round immediately, but Kaname leapt into it and turned on one foot, heading directly up the back of the creature's body, where she raised her sword, and thrust it down between a pair of vertibrae.  
  
A killing blow, this time. The Nagallama let out a death-howl, and toppled slowly onto its side. Kaname retreived her sword as she landed lightly on the ground before the beast vanished in a puff of twinkling pixels.  
  
And then the women were around her, gossipping like they were old friends, moving her along, giving her no time to wonder who the PC had been, nor to ask if the others had seen him. Eventually, she decided not to bother asking. The others would think her weird.  
  
******  
  
It was sticky. Bubbling goo. Black ichor shifting over her skin and unknown liquids being forced into her veins. Not conscious enough to scream, sufficiently awake to be scared and in pain. Wires writhed beneath her skin, and she could feel things in her organs, doing things she wasn't sure of. The chair she sat in felt wrong, pointed, hard, scaled. And something was covering her eyes. She couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Couldn't smell. Couldn't taste, apart from the overwhelming taste of rotten flesh in her mouth.  
  
Things moved around her, and she knew they spoke by the way air impacted on her skin. Rhythmic. She could almost understand what they were saying, but her brain was too unfocussed to concentrate for long enough to make out single words. Instead, it seemed like a constant drone.  
  
In the world of darkness. She was awake. She was alive.  
  
She was the last hope for the world.  
  
******  
  
Kaname found herself on the floor, chilled to her bone. It wasn't just that she'd torn her pyjamas half-off, nor that she'd turned the heater off and the room had grown cold, nor that she'd left her blankets behind on the bed... it was the dream. It seemed so similar to the previous one, and yet, more indepth, more detailed. She didn't know what it meant. Probably nothing. It had just been a dream.  
  
But she still felt dirty. She could still taste rotten meat in her mouth, could feel the vile sensation of thick, bubbling liquids crossing her skin, and in the near-total darkness of her room, she felt blind.  
  
She panicked, and scrambled backwards to the wall, scrabbling for the light switch. She found it and toggled it, the light spilling throughout the room. Yet, something still seemed wrong. The colours were too bright, the shadows too dark. Objects were too sharp, and detail too muted, dulled, blurred. Then reality caught up to her vision, and everything shifted back into normality within half a second of the light coming on.  
  
It didn't calm Kaname down much, but her heart had stopped racing to the point she could think rationally. Well, partly rationally.  
  
She grabbed her phone, and shakily, dialed the number Hotaru had given her in the park. It rang, rang, rang some more. Finally, Kaname was about to give up and hang the phone up again, when the phone at the other end was picked up.  
  
"Hello?" asked a woman Kaname hadn't heard before asked.  
  
Kaname hung up the phone as soon as she realised she didn't recognise the voice. Then, feeling stupid and embarrassed, and even more frightened, she redialed straightaway. The phone was answered again directly.  
  
This time the voice was even more determined. "Hello?"  
  
"Uh... hello... I'm sorry about -"  
  
"Ranma?" came the other voice, quickly, whispered suddenly. Kaname got the idea that she was trying to keep others from overhearing the conversation. "Dammit, where the hell are you? You're scaring the hell out of Hotaru and Mitsuki! Well, Mitsuki, but she doesn't need much scaring... you've just made Hotaru go all Rei on us!"  
  
"Uh... have I got the wrong number?" Kaname asked, weakly. "I just want to talk to Hotaru... Hotaru Tomoe?" She knew she didn't have a wrong number. And the woman had mentioned a Hotaru...  
  
"Yeah, yeah, she's here. You'd better have a good explanation. Here she is." There was the noise of a phone being fumbled to someone else, and Kaname heard the woman mutter, "It's him. I don't wanna be woken until Mamo-chan gets here from now. Okay? Any objections? I gotta get some beauty sleep... gaaaah..."  
  
Hotaru spoke as Kaname heard footsteps thumping away. "Sorry, sempai, that I didn't get to the phone in time. That was... Usagi. A friend. She's a little on edge at the moment."  
  
"I'm not your boyfriend. Why does everyone think I am?"  
  
Hotaru muttered something under her breath, but louder, she said, "You just resemble him strongly, sempai. Why are you ringing at this time of night?"  
  
Kaname felt incredibly stupid for saying it, but she said, "I had a bad dream."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"And you were the first person I thought of who... who I could talk to about it." Her voice, now she was hearing other people talking to and around her, grew stronger, firmer, as the fears of only moments earlier were forgotten.  
  
"What was it about?" She sounded curious, and concerned.  
  
"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry to wake you, it was just -"  
  
"Sempai. What was it about?" That voice, the vocal equivalent of The Stare.  
  
"I... it was... scary. Very scary. I was in a dark place, cold, wet, things... plugged into me... things making me blind... making me feel pain... and I could hear voices... but... not making any sense. I couldn't make anything out."  
  
"That sounds -"  
  
"I've had this dream before," Kaname blurted suddenly. "But this was worse, much worse, because I was more aware of things this time. The last time, it was impressions. This time... it was like memories..."  
  
"Sempai?" Hotaru sounded concerned. "Do you want company?"  
  
Kaname would normally have gone into work the next day... or rather, later that day, considering the time on the clock... but after the problems with the computer systems, the offices had been temporarily shut down for a few days. She had a few days to be alone, and she found she didn't really want to be by herself all that time. "Hotaru... I..."  
  
"It would not be a bother, Kaname-chan. I can come over right away, if you'd like some company." She sounded concerned. What about, she wasn't sure, but she sounded so concerned... or anxious...  
  
"Right now would be great, Hotaru, but there's still so much lawlessness on the streets at this time of night, I couldn't possibly ask you to -"  
  
"Don't worry about me. I can look after myself." She sounded amused. "Give me an address, and I'll be there shortly."  
  
Kaname gave Hotaru her address, and settled in for the long wait until the girl arrived. She was coming from the far side of Kanagawa, so to get to Shinagawa, that would take...  
  
... much longer than the fifteen minutes before there was a knock at her door. Hotaru was paler than usual, dressed up in a woolly overcoat, with a backpack and sleeping bag slung over her shoulders. Behind her stood Mitsuki, her purple hair sticking out in all directions. She yawned and shrugged. "Just makin' sure she got over all right." She nodded a goodnight, and headed off back to the elevators.  
  
Hotaru looked suddenly nervous, and Kaname felt the same, to be honest. There was something about the younger girl that stirred something in Kaname, but she wasn't sure what. Did she prefer women? She didn't think so. She had what she assumed was a perfectly natural reaction to men, but this woman... this girl... she did something to Kaname that Kaname couldn't explain. She stepped aside, and gestured. "Come in."  
  
Hotaru lowered her head and blushed. As she stepped inside, Kaname thought she caught a murmured, "I'm home," from the girl as she passed, but couldn't be sure. Kaname directed Hotaru where to stash her gear before working on sleeping arrangements.  
  
"I'm afraid my futon doubles as my couch, so... unless we take turns at the futon, it'll be a tight squeeze."  
  
Hotaru didn't look around, but Kaname caught the tips of her ears turning red as she blushed. "I'm small, sempai."  
  
"You weren't this nervous in the park, you know."  
  
The girl turned around, all evidence of the blush hidden under her usual alabaster appearance and The Stare. "But I'm not the only one who's nervous, am I? If you aren't comfortable with me sleeping with you... on the futon I mean... I can sleep on the floor."  
  
But Kaname was comfortable with it, that was the problem. And as they lay down to get the rest of the night's sleeping done, Kaname felt strange. Incredibly strange. Like she shouldn't be doing this; that they should walk, not run; that there were people they had to talk to first. But she said nothing. She remained just out of touch of Hotaru all night long, unable to fall asleep. Hotaru's deep and steady breathing told Kaname that the girl was sleeping peacefully.  
  
At least until Hotaru rolled over, her nose barely a centimetre from Kaname's face. "I'll sleep better if I know you're okay, sempai. Tell me about this dream. Everything you remember."  
  
And Kaname did tell her everything. Every detail she could remember, from both dreams. And she told Hotaru about the ghost she'd seen only a few days before, as well as the PC that had appeared ghostlike in frnot of her the night before, in The World. Hotaru admitted that was strange, and she couldn't explain it, but suggested maybe it wasn't so much a PC, or a ghost, but a memory of a past life?  
  
Considering that it was a male that had appeared, that probably would explain why Hotaru appeared to be stalking Kaname, she thought to herself.  
  
"The rest of it... I don't know what to say." Hotaru's eyes grew distant, remembering things obviously very long-since past. "I could tell you a story, but you would think me weird."  
  
"At the moment, you can really only better that opinion, Hotaru-chan, so fire away." Kaname snuggled under the blankets even more before sending a toe out backward to switch the heater off again. Once it was off, the foot whipped back under the covers, making her heat forcefield complete once more.  
  
Hotaru cleared her throat quietly, then began. "It started at the dawn of time. Primeval chaos and order collided, creating the first beings capable of thought. But they weren't happy with the developing universe, and created universes of their own, brilliant examples of thought. Each universe had the most beautiful music, the most artistic painting, the most incredible philosophical discussions... and it was this last that was their bane. Each of these two races embodied different schools of thought. One had developed in a place where there had been no disaster, no trials, no want for anything because all needs were catered to. Where they grew in this universe was so diverse and rich, wherever they moved, they had resources and inspiration. The other race... developed out in intergalactic space, where there was nothing, and only the smartest survived. Their music... was different, but just as inspired - only lonely. Their paintings weren't of green pastures and happy children, it was more shocking, lives torn apart, a random, chaotic, lonely planet, roaming through nothing but dust. Their philosophy was of survival of the fittest, and domination of those not fit to lead - their only resource on their lonely world." Hotaru shifted, getting comfortable again.  
  
"At the same time as the other, each race designed a method to make a universe of their own. Those who had rich resources built a magical kingdom where everyone could be happy, where they weren't limited by the problems of the primal flesh. Death became a thing of the past, as did aging and illness. Great advances were made in peace... and yet, there was a problem..."  
  
Hotaru paused, shifted a little closer before continuing. "Those who had lived on the edge of nothing came to the centre of this Kingdom, their poor world drifting into the system the bright, happy people had been born from. And their world was trapped in the gravity of this star as it had drifted close to the upper edge of the galaxy, millions of years ago. Their Kingdom came into contact with the Kingdom already there, and it wasn't a happy meeting. Their philosophies were too different. Made even worse, their homeworld was subsumed into this other Kingdom, made part of the bright, happy universe, while it's people were left trapped in the universe they had made, grown twisted and dark in their minds' image. No world to call their own, no resources, nothing they could do. Except watch, and hate, this ordered universe, and plot for its eventual destruction. Only that would make them feel any better."  
  
Hotaru's eyes flickered off into the distance. "Realising that her Kingdom was coming close to a war, Queen Serenity of the Moon Kingdom, the 'good guys' who had trapped this rogue planet, selected a member of her population from each planet to become the Guardian Protector of each planet's region. These people were known as the senshi, fighters for love and justice, defenders of order, protectors of truth and innocence and life. They were made strong, normal people warped by the technological entities developed long ago for other purposes. She used this process on her only daughter, preparing her for the time she would have to take over as Queen. And now, the senshi were strong, enduring, and possessing near-magical powers, but what the Moon Kingdom lacked was an army to follow up on what the senshi would start. Instead of developing an army, they built a proud tradition of a space navy, huge starships capable of crossing into real space if needed to combat this growing threat. Small skirmishes had been proceeding for... millions of years... when something occurred to Queen Serenity. The planet her throneworld orbited was growing an intelligent race. Not the first since her race and the other had risen, but the closest, and the strength of the minds below was beginning to affect the stability of the Kingdoms. Currently, they were in balance, and so long as the balance remained below, so it would remain above, where it counted."  
  
Hotaru's eyes focussed further back in time as she continued. If Kaname didn't know better, she'd have thought that Hotaru actually believed this, that she had lived this. But she knew better. "But Serenity knew that one day, the balance would be tipped. It was the nature of intelligent life to rise above itself, set higher and higher goals and reach for the stars. And this would be the problem. If the balance shifted too far in the direction of chaos, the Dark Kingdom would gain ascendancy over the Moon Kingdom, and having her populace subservient to the fickle rulers of the Dark Kingdom wasn't something she could handle. So Serenity decided to tip the balance her way."  
  
"Sounds like a good idea."  
  
"Changing the rules to suit the circumstances doesn't work, Kaname," Hotaru chidded, snapping back into the present. "It could make things go easier for you, but very likely, it can make things even worse than they were. And it did, here. She created a protector Knight of Earth, and engaged him to her daughter - and that caused the final breakdown between the Kingdoms. The Dark Kingdom possibly would have been happy if the Moon Kingdom had returned its homeworld to it, but Serenity would not give over a world of the Moon Kingdom to the ascendant General of the Dark Kingdom's throne, Beryl, and war broke out in earnest. The Moon Kingdom had the upper hand, until the Dark Kingdom committed everything to an attack on Mercury. Serenity evacuated the staff of the libraries and factories of the world, then bombarded it from orbit. The Mercurian fleet commander defected to the other side, as did the Martian, Venusian, and Jovian fleet commanders when their worlds were deemed expendable by Serenity to try to stop the Dark Kingdom. And yet, as she bombarded worlds and devastated the Dark Kingdom armies, she bolstered those enemy forces by forcing her own agents to turn against her. The senshi stood by, ready to protect the Moon and the remaining population, and the Kingdom's two strongest senshi still remained... then the Dark Kingdom fleets had laid a series of bombs across their former homeworld and catapulted it out of the system... which resulted in te loss of one of those two strongest senshi, and the final collapse of the armed forces. Serenity lost most of the rest of te Kingdom before she sent her child, her child's betrothed, and her remaining planetary warriors to new lives on Earth... where they would be born thousands of years later into new bodies, to reinstate the Moon Kingdom." Hotaru fell silent, then.  
  
Eventually, Kaname asked, "So, how does that fit into my dreams?"  
  
Hotaru shrugged, sleepily. "I'm not sure. But, I think it has something," she yawned, "to do with the Dark..." Her voice got too quiet, and then she started snoring softly. Kaname was disgusted with the rapidity that the girl had fallen asleep, but was also a little freaked - Hotaru had obviously believed everything she'd said, that had become apparent during the last bit of the story. Which left two options. Either this was something made up, for and through whatever reason, or else it was true.  
  
Hotaru had made it to Kaname's apartment in around fifteen minutes, after packing. There were ghosts. Heroic people. Strange monsters. Huge explosions. Nightmares of being trapped in a dark world, fears of a war between the light and the dark... perhaps Hotaru was telling the truth. Except, that would mean Kaname had to be a man.  
  
Just to be sure nothing had changed while she was lying next to the girl, Kaname checked herself. Nope, still just a herself. She rolled onto her back, and sighed, raising the back of one hand to her forehead. She wasn't afraid to go to sleep again. Not with someone sleeping with her. No, not at all. Not at  
  
******  
  
Birds. Light. The smell of hot tea, and a home-made breakfast. These were the things Kaname woke to.  
  
They were something of a surprise, but she opened her eyes, and found Hotaru was no longer lying opposite. Instead, she was moving about the small kitchette, heating a prepared meal with haste. It seemed she hadn't woken too much longer before, her hair not having been brushed down or anything, pyjamas mussed and crinkled still. More than that as a telling sign, though, was the way she had to stare blearily at everything for half a minute before she was certain as to what she was looking at.  
  
"You couldn't find anything in the cupboards?" Kaname asked, propping herself up on an elbow. She wasn't sleepy, even with the somewhat early hour and only very recent time of falling asleep. Hotaru, on the other hand, took a few moments to focus on Kaname as the older woman reached out with a dexterous pair of toes and turned the heater back on.  
  
"Um.... no... but Makoto gave me some things to bring over that you l... might like..." She gestured at the fresh foodstuffs, reminding Kaname she had to do another shop. She was getting low on food, come to think of it... and what she had left likely wouldn't have been too tasty to start with. She was used to her food habits - she could eat just about anything, and she forgot that other people mostly just couldn't bring themselves to eat week-old meals.  
  
So long as it wasn't growing anything and wasn't mobile, Kaname could eat it. She thought in a past life, she must have constantly been near starvation and had to fight for her food or something silly like that.  
  
And yet, Hotaru was still saying weird things. Like she really did know her, and really did think she was Kaname's girlfriend. Just little things. Slips of the tongue. Which was a slip of Kaname's mental tongue in itself and she blushed. Kaname was quite sure she, as a woman, wasn't interested in other women. Especially not as she was interested in Shibaru. At least, she thought she was. No, she was. She had to be. She wanted him to buy her things. Take her places. To be seen with him, for him to be seen with her. No, she was definitely interested in guys.  
  
Which set off a new train of thought. Was she interested in girls as well as guys? Now, *that* was a kettle of fish-head soup that Kaname didn't want to open. Hotaru seemed to be content in acting according to Kaname's beliefs, too, and was trying really hard not to slip up... apparently. Her friends, though, weren't making as hard an effort.  
  
Hotaru said something that Kaname missed, deep in thought. She caught it the second time around, though. "Any more bad dreams?"  
  
Kaname shook her head. "No. Nothing. Thankfully. I... they scare me."  
  
"I can understand why, from what you said last night," Hotaru replied. "Dreaming of things out of your control, dreaming important things that you've got to understand..."  
  
"What?" Kaname asked, puzzled.  
  
"Forget I said anything," Hotaru waved away, waking up faster in that moment than in the few minutes before. "Breakfast is ready. Do you... uh... have a table or anything to eat on?" Kaname shrugged and nodded at the bed. "Oh. I should have guessed," Hotaru sighed, bringing a pair of trays over, one at a time. She gave the first to Kaname, who quietly slid it across to Hotaru's side of the futon, and took the tray Hotaru brought back. The girl looked cold, so Kaname bent sideways and twisted around, grabbed the heater, and dumped it uncerimoniously behind and to the left of Hotaru. She then waited until Hotaru was ready to eat before speaking again.  
  
"Thanks for the breakfast," she mumbled, and then ate. And ate some more. She noted Hotaru watching with a twinkle of amusement in her eye, and wondered what was so funny. Not knowing, she asked.  
  
"It's the way you eat. I haven't seen it in so long."  
  
Kaname's eyes narrowed. "*Have* you seen me eat before?"  
  
"Yes." No hesitation, just a rapid answer around her chopsticks.  
  
"Ignoring the other day at the street vendor's?"  
  
Now Hotaru paused and thought. Then, slowly, "... Yes..."  
  
"When?"  
  
The girl looked uncomfortable. "You... aren't ready to know yet."  
  
"Isn't that my decision to make?"  
  
Hotaru looked away, and wouldn't look back.  
  
"You're claiming to be my friend, but you're lying to me. And you've been lying -"  
  
"You aren't ready for it, trust me, please," Hotaru said in a small voice. "Sempai, I'm not comfortable talking about this. Not with you. Not now, not like you are. You should remember what you were before you became this... new you. I knew, from the moment I saw you, you weren't the person I'm missing. That all my friends, and all his friends, are missing. We've not seen you in nearly six weeks, and most of us... Kaname, we miss our friend dearly, and I, I can wait, and my friends and sempai's friends... they have to wait. Not because they want to, but because *I'm* making them wait. You're not ready. Please, just... just act like you were before, when you didn't want to know."  
  
With a start, Kaname realised Hotaru was near tears. She pulled back from the subject. "This is a nice breakfast, Hotaru-chan," she said with genuine feeling. "Please, tell this Makoto her cooking is wonderful."  
  
Hotaru nodded, sobbed once more, and tried to pull it in. Kaname could see she was desperately lonely, separated from her... boyfriend? That didn't seem quite right. Everyone was suggesting that Hotaru and her friends had been looking for a man, but they all seemed to be looking AT a woman... maybe they all thought Kaname knew? Maybe he was a criminal, this Ranma, a scoundrel, scourge of women, a lusting, wanton man with a burning desire for debauchery.  
  
But that couldn't be right, because Hotaru didn't seem to be into that.  
  
Then again, Kaname didn't think she went for women, either...  
  
Hotaru didn't look up for the rest of the meal. She didn't do much talking, either, so Kaname tried to fill the silence. First of all with insane chatter about what to do for the day, then she turned on the television and let the news fill them in on the troubles of the night before. As they finished breakfast, Kaname took everything up into the kitchenette, cleaned what needed to be cleaned, then turned to find Hotaru stripping off.  
  
Oh god...  
  
But no, she had a gi with her she was pulling on. Thankfully. Had she gotten naked, Kaname wasn't sure what she'd have done. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out. But Hotaru was oblivious to Kaname's eyes - partly perhaps because she had her back to Kaname and possibly thought Kaname was still working at the sink. Water was still sloshing about before draining, after all. Kaname turned back to the sink and worked studiously for a few minutes with a heavy blush on her cheeks, until she was certain Hotaru had dressed again.  
  
She found the yougner woman working out, going through some warmup stretches. Kaname shrugged, and joined her with what she'd been learning at her few lessons. Hotaru's eyes noticed Kaname's workout, and offered little hints along the way as they ran through a few moves and a few rounds of slow sparring. "I usually go faster and harder," Hotaru said at one point.  
  
"And me?" Kaname asked, remembering to block a punch with a forearm.  
  
Hotaru hesitated. Then, decided it likely wasn't too important in the scheme of things if Kaname knew some small things that wouldn't blow whatever worldview she had currently out of the water, because she said, "You were an expert. Faster, stronger, harder, more skilled... I'm surprised you haven't come apart at the seams..."  
  
"I try to keep active," Kaname said, remembering the pains in her joints when she slowed down for too long. "My runs, time in the gym after work, Tae Kwon Do on weekends... I just keep feeling something's missing. I'm not sore when I'm active, though..."  
  
Hotaru nodded, and slipped in a light tap to Kaname's shoulder. "I'm enjoying this, sempai."  
  
"Oh? Glad to be of service. Kaname Mizuno, the human punching bag..."  
  
"It's nice to be able to touch you," Hotaru said, tagging Kaname again. Something must have shown on Kaname's face, because Hotaru suddenly blushed and clapped her hands to her mouth, dropping out of the fight. "I didn't just say that... oh no, I did." She covered her face with her hands, blushing. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I really didn't -"  
  
Kaname shrugged, embarrassed, but trying not to show her mortification at the innocent comment. She'd known what Hotaru ahd said, but yes, from her it had sounded *really* wrong. "It's okay, I know what you mean." She resumed her opening sparring pose, waiting for the girl to get back up again, but Hotaru didn't. Instead, she slumped to her knees, and stared at the floor.  
  
"I'm sorry, Kaname," she said, through sobs. "I thought I could do this. I thought I could just be your friend again, like we used to be. I thought... I could make sure none of your past got through to you until you were ready to hear it, and you're not. You're not ready. And I thought I was strong enough, you know, to hold back my feelings. To make myself just be your friend and not your girlfriend. You know? I thought if I could believe it hard enough, just tried not to remember what it was like holding hands, staring at the stars... kissing... I was bad to you. I was so bad to you. I hurt you, and then I compounded that error in hurting you again by not believing you when you said everything was all right. And when you punched your way out from under that building, I... was overjoyed. And you saved Mitsuki, and the rest of us, and you were scary, and I looked at you and felt your power and your determination and thought, was this what you felt like when I was bad? And then -" She stopped as Kaname's fingers, placed under her chin, rose and shut Hotaru's mouth. She sat there, crying still, looking into Kaname's eyes.  
  
Kaname didn't like the situation much. She realised, at that point, that she, Kaname Mizuno (or whoever she really was), was the mysterious boyfriend of Hotaru's they were searching for, this Ranma. And while everyone else spoke of this Ranma as a man, Kaname was very obviously female. She felt disturbed by this, but not as much as she thought she would have before. Perhaps this was something she was meant to know, something that she was ready for. "Hotaru, I thought you said I wasn't ready." She was only mock-angry, but Hotaru burst into a fresh batch of tears.  
  
"I'm sorry, sempai, I'm really, really sorry..." Kaname sank down next to Hotaru and wrapped her arms around the girl, rocked her until most of the sobbing subsided. It took a little while, but Hotaru eventually settled down in the embrace, occasional sobs wracking her body. When she was quiet, Kaname released her, and the young woman pulled back, sat very formally. "I am very sorry, sempai, I thought I had better control of myself than that."  
  
"We all have to break down sometime, Hotaru-chan," Kaname said, not believing she just had. She shook her head. "People can't exist by themselves, within themselves. Look at my apartment. There's nothing here."  
  
"It's certainly cleaner than I'd have expected from your room at the dorm," Hotaru agreed quietly in a voice that told Kaname she was still close to tears.  
  
"It has no personality. No warmth," continued Kaname. "Nothing. It's empty, devoid of personality. A reflection of its owner. Me. I have no past. I have... well, if I get my memory back, it's like I have no future. Kaname Mizuno dies when I know who and what I was. When I remember. I haven't consciously thought like that, but that's how it's been. And being here... being like this, holding everything inside, it kills you. Perhaps that's because there's nothing in here," Kaname tapped her head, "but I don't have a life. I'm dead inside. Sitting here, night after night, I nearly made me dead on the outside, too. Joining The World, that made life good again. For a while. Then it got to be boring again. It was just me. Again, alone. That's when I met... Kanrinin, and he directed me to Mercurial, which led to you. You hold my past. I think you might hold my future. And that's scary, because -"  
  
"Because you think you won't be you anymore if you're Ranma," Hotaru finished. "Because although you're not satisfied with life, with YOUR life, you don't want to stop living and become someone else."  
  
"Yeah. I want to fight, I want to keep this life." Kaname watched Hotaru seemingly break inside, but before the tears could roll again, she added, "but I think there are more important things in life right now."  
  
Hotaru looked up, mystified. "What things?"  
  
"You're crying, for a start," Kaname remarked. "And my nightmares. Whatever they mean. And... and there was a video two days ago at work... it looked to be someone familiar... but I don't know anyone, remember? Maybe you do." Kaname shrugged. "All I want to know is why you keep saying you're looking for your boyfriend but keep finding me."  
  
"You... uh... that's a bit hard to explain, sempai," Hotaru sniffed, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her gi. Then she sat upright, a strange look on her face. "But... it's something you have to know. Come with me." She got up, and led a mystified Kaname into the bathroom, where she proceeded to run the hot tap until the water had heated sufficiently for whatever purpose she had in mind. "You see, Ranma suffered from a curse. When he was splashed with cold water, he turned into a girl. And when he was then splashed with hot water -" Hotaru scooped up some hot water in her hands and drenched Kaname with it. Kaname stared back in mild shock and surprise. "- he turned back into a man." She waited, expectantly, for something to happen.  
  
It didn't.  
  
Hotaru leaned forward and, very slowly, poked Kaname in her left breast. It sank into the soft flesh. Kaname glared.  
  
"I... I don't understand..."  
  
"Hot water, eh?" Kaname said, reaching for a towel. "I could have TOLD you I stay a woman when immersed in hot water. I *do* bathe, you know."  
  
******  
  
Akane waited, that Monday morning, on the back steps of the dojo. She had been waiting there, ready, clean and dressed up nicely, since shortly after the phone call had come through two hours earlier. Hotaru was coming out with a friend for the afternoon, someone Akane knew very well who Hotaru said didn't know Akane. She guessed it was Ranma, and having seen some of the so-called Amnesiacs where she worked now, she guessed he was one of them. Hotaru had asked Akane that this person had only just been told who she really was, and was taking it fairly well, but wanted to proceed slowly.  
  
Akane could understand that. And so, she'd been sitting outside, in the chilled wind, meditating. Or trying to, anyway. The snow that fell... she was sheltered from it, but she was focussing on the snow as it blew on the wind she was sheltered from. It wasn't working, though. She needed to talk to Ranma still. She'd been working on her maturity while dealing with her grief, but the emotions that would spring up with Ranma when they were together... she was scared they'd spring up again while talking to this Ranma with no memory, and she'd scare him off again. She couldn't handle doing that a second time. She just couldn't.  
  
So she tried again, angrily picking a snowflake, and following it to the ground. Then picking another one, and watching that hit the ground also. It wasn't working. She just knew, after all this time, all this preparation, she was going to blow it. It had been easy keeping in touch with Hotaru and the others while Ranma had been gone, but now he was back... or someone who looked like him, would she revert back to type? She hoped not, but the damned snowflakes kept -  
  
A hand reached out, cupped one of the flakes as it tumbled by, picked out on a random breeze that just happened to turn back on itself and flutter under the eaves of the roof above Akane.  
  
"Who -?" Akane asked, turning, wondering if Akane and Ranma had arrived earlier than expected.  
  
But it was just Kasumi, staring at the snowflake which somehow kept aloft in her palm. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked, her voice soft and distant.  
  
"I can't focus on it, Kasumi," Akane grumped. "I'm trying to get calm before... before my friends turn up, but... I can't."  
  
Kasumi nodded, almost to herself, as she knealt down next to Akane. Her face wasn't far from her younger sister's, and she held her hand up between them. "Look at it. How it moves. How it flutters. Perfection in nature."  
  
"I don't -"  
  
"Just look at it," Kasumi urged gently. Akane did. It was a snowflake. "No; *really* look at it."  
  
Akane tried again. It was just a snowflake. She'd thought they could help her calm down, but they hadn't. There was nothing about them that inspired serenity. It was just a stupid snowflake after all, in Kasumi's hand, held aloft on invisible currents of air, twisting, floating, turning...  
  
For a moment, Akane was lost in the snowflake. Then she gave her head a slight shake, and came out of it. "Wow. That's powerful."  
  
"It is, isn't it?" Kasumi smiled. "People are like this, too," she said, stretching her hand out so the flake could escape. Akane followed the gesture with her eyes, and saw millions of snowflakes twisting and turning as they floated to the Earth's surface. "Millions upon millions of perfect creations, fluttering in the winds of time, all unique and all worth watching. If we were as a god, we could watch all the single lives that make up this world, and those lives that go wrong, we could be tempted to reach in, adjust it just a little to make it go right. But would that be right?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Akane, if I was... a being of great power... how could I best use that power?"  
  
The subject wasn't something that Akane had heard Kasumi talk of before, and for a moment she was confused. She thought about it while she considered the snow. "I don't know," she replied, eventually. "Save lives? Give people money? Stop wars? Destroy diseases?"  
  
"Good answers," Kasumi smiled. "But saving lives is an eternal job. Money... can be spent easily, and too much would ruin economies. What is to say that stopping a war would allow the right side to triumph? If there is a right side in war. Or that it would stop other wars from starting? And diseases always change. They are always different. Destroying diseases is also a full-time job." She paused, looking out distantly into the snow, serious again. "Is that an effective use of power? Throwing it at problems that can only be fixed if people want them to be fixed?"  
  
"What do you mean, Kasumi?"  
  
"Think for a moment, Akane. I have power. I can stop wars. I do stop wars. People find other reasons to fight, or other battles to win, or perhaps the people involved in the fighting don't want to stop, or their leaders do. What do I do then?"  
  
Akane thought hard again, but couldn't come up with a neat answer. "I don't know... change their minds?"  
  
"By talking to them? If that doesn't work?"  
  
"Then really change their minds. So they don't *want* to fight..."  
  
"How does that make me any more right than them, then?"  
  
"What's the answer, then, Kasumi? How would you stop a war?"  
  
Kasumi smiled. "I wouldn't try."  
  
Akane looked confused now, and she asked, "Then what would you do with the power of a god? If you didn't do any good with it..."  
  
Kasumi's smile grew wider, and she closed her eyes, and suddenly, she looked normal. As if she hadn't been these last few minutes. "What would I do if I had power, Akane? I would try to make those around me happy. Make them safe. Make sure they can life their lives as they wish to rather than what life forces upon them."  
  
Akane digested this, and briefly, from nowhere she could discern within herself, felt a very strong urge to ask for a pony. "What does this have to do with snow?"  
  
"The snow... is just a convenient means to concentrating. Of focussing. Father taught that to me before you were born." Kasumi's eyes took on a distant gaze again and she sighed. "You've grown up a lot recently. You've become a very nice young woman."  
  
"I wasn't before?"  
  
"You had some rough edges," Kasumi smiled. "Now the rest of your life is before you. You have great power in your hands. You can make or break people, force them to your will if you so wish. But this responsibility is yours, Akane. What you do now you are an adult... is on your shoulders."  
  
"Kasumi? Are you... are you talking about Ranma?" Kasumi nodded, and Akane felt fear again. Fear, hurt, pain, anguish. She'd lost him. And if she was right, and Ranma had lost his memory, then if Akane wanted to, she could get in with him again... and with a start, she realised this was exactly what Kasumi had been talking about, in a roundabout manner. She had power, right now, that she could use and abuse in a manner she thought best for her. Or that she fooled herself into thinking was best for other people, but really for her. And at that same moment, she realised her older sister was right again, with what Kasumi would do if she had power. Right now, knowing this, seeing with a touch more maturity than she had when Ranma had broken up with her in the first place, broken their engagement off, even after deciding they could be friends, she knew now she *would* be friends. There wouldn't be any problem, not with her, not with Ranma, and they were the only two people who mattered in that respect. Akane wouldn't abuse her knowledge of him to try to steal him back, or saboutage his relationship, or stick a dagger into his back to get back at him or make him look at her again, any of the things she would once have done had he turned his back on her; no, she wouldn't. She'd do her best to make sure Ranma was able to move on with his life, in whatever it was he wanted to do with it. She'd help him with every fibre of her being for as long as she could or was needed or wanted, and she'd be happy to do so. She had to move on, too, and watching Ranma move into a new life... well, it would hurt, and probably it would hurt more than she had with the break-up, but knowing for certain he was a friend and always would be one would help her there. No doubt, knowing Ranma, he'd be there for her just as much as ever, possibly more so, having seen the 'new', mature him in action twice now.  
  
That made her strangely happy.  
  
The snow fell, and the bell out by the front gate rang. "That will be Ranma now, I expect," Kasumi said, standing again and heading for the gates.  
  
Akane nodded and stood herself, brushing down her pants and jumper. Then she stopped, confused. "Kasumi? I didn't tell you Ranma was coming over..."  
  
Kasumi stopped, and out of Akane's line of sight, she smiled. "Oh? Didn't you? How strange."  
  
******  
  
The meal had been nice, and there had been an awful lot of it. Akane's older sister, Kasumi, cooked well, and Kaname had thanked her profusely for the good food after the meal. Akane kept looking at her weirdly, though, all through the meal, and finally, Kaname had to whisper to Hotaru while Akane's back was turned, "What's going on with your friend?"  
  
"Pardon?" Hotaru replied, taken aback a little. Then she considered, shrugged, and said, "She's your ex-fiance. You... broke up with her and made things... official with me." Akane turned back to face them, and Kaname smiled nervously at her.  
  
"Excuse us a moment," she said quickly, before dragging Hotaru out of the room. "How could you fail to tell me we were going to see my - how many women was I involved with?" She sagged back against the wall, drained. This day, whether she wanted them or not, was turning out to be full of surprises. The more Kaname found out about herself, about her old self, the more she wasn't a fan of the type of woman she'd been. "I don't even *like* women, not like that... and I was engaged to one? How'd we get around the law? Oh man, I was a cross-dresser, right? Some kind of perverted freak like this lech HANGING OFF MY CHEST GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!" Kaname brushed ineffectively at the wizened piece of fruit buried in her cleavage. No amount of slapping was removing him from her.  
  
"Ahhhhh! Ranma, how long it's been since I had the change to sample your unique helloes!"  
  
Akane poked her head through the door beside Kaname at the commotion, and her eyes lit up in a way Kaname hadn't seen yet today. She looked as if she could kill something, and had just been given permission to do so. "LECH! Pervert! Freak!" Kaname watched in amazement as Hotaru's friend - er, Kaname's ex-fiance - developed a mallet from nothing and belted into the thing clutching at Kaname's bosom so hard it was dislodged and knocked down the hall, through a wall. Akane panted angrily, then forced herself to calm down. "I'm sorry you had to meet him again, R- Kaname. I was hoping he'd stay out longer, but he seems to have come in with the cold."  
  
"What... what was that thing?" Kaname got out. Hotaru was still looking up the hall at the hole in the wall the old man had made.  
  
"That... was Happosai. The man who trained our fathers in martial arts. Or at least led them on a rampage across Japan years ago." Akane shrugged. "He's a pervert. Don't be afraid to hit him if he grabs you or... well... touches you in ways you don't like."  
  
"No, him I understand. What was *that*?" Kaname repeated, looking pointedly at Akane's now-empty hand and miming striking something with a mallet with her hands.  
  
"Ohhh..." Akane held her hands up. "Ki. You know."  
  
"Actually," Hotaru said, turning back, "She doesn't. She doesn't remember anything of Ranma."  
  
"She does martial arts, though, you said," Akane replied, brow furrowing.  
  
"I took up exercising because I was hurting all the time if I didn't get in a lot of physical work," Kaname explained, "and I only just joined up for Tae Kwon Do at the gym. Can you teach me how to do that?" She looked interested, and had apparently forgotten all she had just been saying. At least, for the moment...  
  
"Uh... Ranma... knows all this... don't you... somewhere?" Akane asked hesitantly.  
  
Kaname shook her head. "No, I thought you only got those things in bad anime. How do you do it? Come ooonnnn! With everything you two have been dropping around me today, *someone* owes me something good to take my mind off things until I can deal with them..."  
  
"Both of us?" Akane asked, looking to Hotaru.  
  
"I told him you two had been engaged," Hotaru replied, embarrassed. "It was... pretty obvious in there."  
  
Akane looked upset. "I... wanted to talk to Ranma... and this..." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Kaname, this has got to be hard on you, too. We're all wanting to see who we knew, and we keep looking. Hotaru's been doing it, too, but you've been focussed on me all afternoon. We look at you, and everything's the same. The gaze, the smile, the laugh... the only thing that's different... is it isn't Ranma." Akane's eyes shifted upwards slightly. "Oh, and your hair. Your hair should be red. And... tied up..."  
  
"That's confused me, too," Hotaru added. "Or black. When Ranma... drained us all, in his girl body, his hair went from red to a really deep black."  
  
Kaname shook her head, grabbed one of her bangs, and waved it under Akane and Hotaru's noses. "My hair's always been this colour, it's natural."  
  
"For you, yes," Hotaru replied, taking the bang from Kaname's grasp and letting it drop back against the woman's cheek. "But for Ranma... no. And that's his body..."  
  
"I don't believe all this stuff about a curse, y'know. I'm a girl an' I always have been!"  
  
Akane blinked at the sudden change in speech. Hotaru did likewise. Before either could say anything, though, Kasumi intercepted them by appearing from nowhere, taking Kaname's hand, and guiding her back to the table. "The next course is served," she offered with a smile.  
  
That defused the situation, for the moment, but Kaname still gave dark looks to both Akane and Hotaru. Akane looked like someone had killed her pet pig (that was curled up protectively in her lap, glaring evily at Kaname), and Hotaru... well, she was just picking at the small desert, not really doing much looking at anyone. Kasumi carried most of the conversation, asking Kaname about her work, her home, her life in general. As Kaname told her about how she met Hotaru and her friends, Kasumi cast a speculative eye over Hotaru for a moment before nodding, then she asked for some insignificant point of detail, just to show she was indeed listening to every word spoken.  
  
Once the meal was finished, she gave Akane a knowing look that appeared to unnerve Hotaru a little, then smiled at Kaname. "Thank you for taking the time to stop by and say hello. You're not Ranma, as these two still look at you and see, but it is nice to know that our friend... lives on... in one form or another. For the time being," she added, thoughtfully. "I will begin cleaning up. I'm sure the three of you can find somewhere to sit and talk, as befits friends?" She stood, and started gathering dishes. Kaname made to help, as thanks for the meal, but Kasumi waved her down with a smile and continued picking up used plates and bowls before heading for the kitchen.  
  
Akane still looked a little uncomfortable, but then looked as if she'd had some inspiration. "The dojo!" she announced, and scrambled to her feet. She ushered Hotaru and Kaname out of the room, along the exterior veranda and into a large room with padding aorund the walls and hard mats covering a large proportion of the polished wooden floors. Around the edges of the room stood various implements of messy destruction: kusuri-gamas, sai, a lonely pair of nunchuku, even a halberd. Training dummies were propper up in one corner, broken and smashed straw and rock dummies lying in front of the unbroken upright ones. Kaname looked around, and kept silent, her eyes opening wide. Hotaru stepped up beside her, her sholder just brushing Kaname's back lightly. The younger woman didn't back away, though; instead, she appeared to press in slightly harder.  
  
"This is the dojo," Akane said, unnecessarily, gesturing widely with one hand while turning to face Kaname and Hotaru. She almost looked desperate, eyes wide, smile unusually wide. Her pig also looked worried at Akane's reaction, and actually growled at Kaname. She backed away a step, beginning to raise her hands defensively to disarm any coming situation, but turned, and changed her gesture into placing her hands on Hotaru's biceps, pushing her back out the door.  
  
"Wait out here for a moment," Kaname said before sliding the door shut and clicking the lock behind her. She turned again, to face Akane, who was looking more worried, and stepped closer to the woman again. "Akane? Is something wrong?"  
  
Akane turned away, and the subtle movements of her shoulders told Kaname she was trying to breathe deeply and calmly, forcing herself to relax. She could almost visualise the image the woman was using to calm herself... the pond she'd seen hints of outside under the snow, surrounded by a ring of rocks in the midst of a spring afternoon with cherry blossoms drifting past on the breeze. Quite why that image popped into Kaname's head, she didn't know. It didn't seem to be a memory of her past life, as she had none, and thoughts she had about anything prior to the day she woke up naked invariably slid out of her mind or gave her headaches - no, this seemed different.  
  
Almost like she could read Akane's mind.  
  
She knew Akane wasn't crying, but was close to it. Obviously, this Ranma person had been close to Akane, and Kaname felt wrong that she had his body, but nothing of him to offer these two women who had apparently been very close to him.  
  
Fiancee. Boyfriend.  
  
Man, was this Ranma ever a playboy...  
  
Kaname sighed inwardly. It sounded as if she was already coming around to the possibility that she may have actually been a he at some point in time. She hadn't noticed any scarring or any other evidence that she was only recently a female when bathing, but then, Hotaru had been convinced there was some kind of curse involved that worked with water. And while Kaname thought that maybe, just *maybe* she was being fed a line... there really were magical girls. And mystical knights. Strong magic forces encircled Tokyo protectively against the forces of darkness.  
  
- pain, complete and utter. Raw dejection, depression, resignation. But no, no, He would not win. She could still fight. Fight in small ways. There were still heroes, just not where they were needed. She had to move them, like playing chess, or Fantasy Knights Ultra, and do it in ways that wouldn't trigger responses from Him and His. For her to escape the Darkness, to bring Light to Japan once more -  
  
Kaname managed not to stagger backwards, but only because her ankles gave out and she toppled to the ground in a mess of suddenly spasming limbs. She did it silently, though, or mostly so - Akane didn't turn around, nor did Hotaru attempt to gain entrance - so she held herself on her knees in a crouch, until she knew whether or not she could stand properly again. Once she was sure, she stood, and seeing Akane was still working on her relaxation technique, she placed a hand supportively on Akane's shoulder and spoke.  
  
"I'm not him. I should have been nicer about saying that before. But you know me; or rather, you don't. Neither does Hotaru. You both keep trying to see someone I'm not and likely never was in me, and that hurts me, because I can't make friends here, now, if people keep thinking I'm not here. I'm not temporary, I'm not a glitch - this is me, this is who I am. I'm rude and abrupt occasionally because people... well, people expect me to have a life. Experiences I can fall back on. Even if they know I'm an Amnesiac. Most people think we're just faking our memory loss. I can tell you, I don't have one single memory before waking up in that hell-hole. And I have no experiences, besides what I've seen and done in the six weeks since then. I work, now. I'm single, Hotaru says I'm 19 and some months, I flirt with Shibby-chan in IT and have weird things happen to my computer at work. I play too much in The World for my own good, and met a whole bunch of girls who know who I was but don't care to know who I *am*. I'm not him. Not a perverted cross-dressing cursed lech who can't hold a relationship or a job down. I'm me. Kaname Mizuno, age 20, and please, please stop crying."  
  
Akane bent down, released the pig, who scowled at Kaname before Akane patted him on the backside and he trotted off, unhappily, towards one of the walls where he took up a position watching the proceedings. She stood upright then, removed Kaname's hand before turning to face her. Akane's eyes were rimmed with red, and she wiped at her cheeks. "I know. I know all this. It's just - I was so mean, so nasty to him without realising. I should have known, he wasn't the only person who'd said anything, but - I loved him and I thought that was enough for him to accept me as... me. I'm not the most trusting person when I really should trust, and I did Ranma an injustice... many times over... by not trusting him, not believing him, not believing my own eyes... and I finally realise this, and many other things - and..." She sniffed, rubbed at her eyes again. "And I didn't get the chance to tell him I was sorry. That I was the idiot, that I was the one who ruined our chances at marriage. He was an idiot too, but... he was more honest with what and who he was than I was. Ranma was Ranma. What you saw was what you got. He was stupid, easily bored, adversarial, inconsiderate, and rude - but that was him... before he grew up. When he came here, Kaname, Ranma was like that. That was how his father was. A crude brute who cared about nothing but fighting, food and fun. He couldn't take anything seriously, and was so blind he didn't know there were lines to step over. He changed, though. I got to know him, and he changed, very slowly. He wasn't exactly honourable - but he wouldn't do anything to deliberately hurt someone he loved and he would defend you with his life if necessary. He had his own code of conduct. And that grew as he did. And when we... when he left here and moved in with Hotaru and her friends, away from me, he grew up faster. Because I wasn't... hitting him, hurting him, pushing him away when I should have at least been pulling him closer... he became a man. A strong, proud man who seemed to have thrown off his father's influence. A man I wanted to apologise to. To tell him I know why he left, why he split up with me... why I hoped we could still be friends. He wanted to be friends. I had to tell him I wanted to be, too. And that I was trying to grow up, like him, and throw off my childishness and my old problems and try to make myself someone who didn't push people who I wanted close to be further away with every word, every action. I wanted him to be a tiny bit proud of me, as I was proud of him." Akane sobbed again, and Kaname felt she would start crying, so she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Akane.  
  
The dark-haired woman buried her head in Kaname's shoulder, and cried.  
  
******  
  
Outside, Hotaru looked around the backyard. It seemed to be in one piece again; of course, the last time she'd seen it, she had been fighting Ranma, to kill him, or at least hurt him as much as she was being hurt. Dressed in that outfit... she sighed, and wondered if she'd ever get a chance to model it for Ranma in private. No use wondering, though, she thought to herself. Ranma was gone and she had to accept that. Hotaru loved Ranma enough that she felt she could continue her feelings for him with this new woman, this Kaname, but that wasn't possible. She wasn't interested. And, well, not being cursed kind of threw a spanner into the works there. It was so frustrating! Most of her friends had by now died and come back to life at least once. Ranma had only lost his memory, but Hotaru was starting to think it may have been more than that, that perhaps Ranma's memories no longer existed. That Kaname had been a blank slate, and who she was now had been pieced together completely through her sheer force of will. That was what Kaname believed, at any rate, and Hotaru had to admit she believed her. So did that mean Ranma was lost for good?  
  
"No," Kasumi said, from behind where Hotaru sat on the edge of the veranda. Hotaru jumped, and pivoted around quickly. Kasumi smiled disarmingly. "It's nice to see you when you're not trying to destroy my home," she added.  
  
"Um... I'm really sorry about that," Hotaru offered, knowing how stupid that sounded.  
  
Kasumi waved it off. "It was paid for. And it's no different to the damage done to the house when Ranma was living here. Ahh..." Her eyes drifted backwards into the past, and Hotaru nearly found herself joining the elder Tendo sister. "You know he is still alive," she said, very matter-of-factly.  
  
Hotaru nodded. "I can feel him. All around Kaname. But... I don't feel him *in* her. It's like... they've been separated. I don't know how, I don't know why. And I can't ask - Ami, because, because, I can't explain it to her."  
  
Kasumi smiled, studied the snow as it fell in front of them. "He has been gone before. He will be gone again. But then... Ranma's journey... it is a long, hard journey. To walk the line he has chosen for himself. And had chosen for him. Because no one lives in a vacuum, and other people influence our decisions."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Perhaps the greatest gift we have, as living creatures, is the power of choice. It's what separates humans from animals. We can say no to our instincts." Kasumi chuckled lightly. "We don't often say no to them, but we can. Our choices can be mundane, or profound. Ranma's choice is approaching. He has both avenues in front of him, right now. He can go either way."  
  
"Light or Dark," Hotaru realised. "He's not just a Dark General, he's also a senshi! But - isn't that impossible?" Then she kicked herself for asking that out loud, knowing full well that Kasumi couldn't answer.  
  
But the eldest Tendo sister surprised her, for she considered the question seriously before answering. "Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean that it can't. The most loyal of military leaders can change sides if they feel their cause is no longer just. Politicians can side with opponents for causes that their constituents hold dearly. And Knights can be turned into Generals with the touch of a King's sword, and vice-versa. Ranma is Ranma, no matter what else affects him. Trust in him, and that trust will be returned."  
  
"You're not as-" Hotaru caught her tongue before it could finish the sentence, but again, Kasumi surprised her.  
  
"Out of it as people would assume?" She chuckled. "I have my moments."  
  
"Ranma said you could be scary."  
  
Kasumi looked thoughtful. "Perhaps I am when my family's happiness is threatened. I cannot really say as I don't upset my family." She smiled wanly. "I may have misjudged Ranma. I consider him family, of course, but he hurt my little sister badly. Which resulted in her losing some of her more... unsavoury attitudes."  
  
"Children often grow up when confronted with painful changes to their comfortable existances," Hotaru remarked, suddenly feeling Saturn inside her, feeling ancient.  
  
"Indeed," Kasumi agreed with similar weight to her words. They sat in silence, while muffled sobbing continued in the dojo.  
  
******  
  
"Agent Sato. Have you found him yet?"  
  
"I have not," Sato replied. "Of all the people... who I have interviewed over the last month... none display the properties you told me of." He leaned back into his chair, steepling his fingers as he gazed down at the small monitor on his desk. A face stared back at him, blackness behind the figure.  
  
"My plans depend on his demise," Yoshihiro reminded the government official. "You assured me in this capacity, you could find him if he wasn't destroyed by Raijin, and make sure he was eliminated from the equation."  
  
"He is... in my world now, and... I will dispose of him. Delete him from... your plans. Permanently." Sato leaned forward. "But first... I must know... how to find him."  
  
Yoshihiro turned his face to look at something off-screen, nodded at something, then turned back. "We have uploaded all our data on Ranma Saotome to you. Even if you can't find someone who looks like him, then perhaps... perhaps you can look for other aspects of him. As he was when last seen, last felt, he should be pouring Dark energies from within himself like a harbour wave and should stand out. Even if he hasn't embarked on a life of crime with the negative aspects of his personality that would have surfaced when he... became a General."  
  
"I have examined... all those aspects. One person... fitted the visual aspect... to within ninety-seven point three percent. But her personality... was different. As was her makeup. And..." Sato paused and leaned forward. "She had... no memories of Tokyo... of Raijin... of anything... before waking up in The Zone. She still... has no memories of that time, nor... of who she was."  
  
"What... aspect of her differed from the models you received?" Yoshihiro wanted to know.  
  
"Her hair... was coloured differently."  
  
"You let her go. Based on her hair colour?" Yoshihiro looked as if he was going to explode, then calmed down. "That was most likely him. Mr Saotome. Hiding himself in plain sight. After all... these Amnesiacs... there's no logical reason for them having lost their memories. He must be faking it. I assume you know where he is now?"  
  
"We know... where she works, and where... she lives."  
  
"Bring him in, Agent Sato." Yoshihiro stepped back from the monitor. "And take no chances." The monitor clicked off.  
  
Sato smiled. It wasn't nice; it was superior. "She doesn't... stand a chance against me."  
  
******  
  
Akane finally stopped crying. Kaname's arms relaxed, and inwardly, she sighed, feeling her shoulders wet from tears. The Tendo woman was still looking very upset, though, and Kaname wasn't quite sure how to act. Akane wasn't meeting her gaze yet, as she stepped back, away from Kaname, starting to turn around.  
  
"I'm sorry," Akane started, before Kaname surprised herself by reaching out and taking Akane's face by her chin and turning her to face her again.  
  
"There's no need for apologies," she told Akane. "I'm not the person you have to talk to, and I don't know if I ever will be. I kind of hope not, because... that would mean the death of me. But... he's more wanted than I am," she added with a slight chuckle. She hoped Akane didn't notice the small catch in her voice. "And I'm sure... if he was as nice as you and Hotaru suggest... and Hotaru's friends... I think he knew. I think he respected and admired you, and loved you and wanted to be with you, and -"  
  
Akane held up a hand. "No. No, you're wrong. He wasn't nice. He could be... so selfish. So uncaring, unkind, just... wouldn't notice anything else outside of his own head unless it related directly to him. He... loved me, maybe... once... but that changed... and I want to be friends again, but unless he comes back... we can't be friends." Tears threatened around the corners of her eyes, but she looked to be calming down again. "And he didn't want to be with me. For good reason, maybe. I... for all that I now understand his reasons, I think maybe... just maybe... we could have worked it out together. But... without him leaving me, I'd never have realised. I'd never have been forced to think about my actions and reactions and how they affected him. I don't know. Maybe I was affected by seeing my father after my mother died... and didn't want to chance being hurt like that... maybe it's something deeper inside me. I don't know. It... was something I wanted to explore with Ranma. As friends, finding out why I act the way I do."  
  
"He'll be... fine," Kaname said, after a while. She was feeling definitely uncomfortable now, it felt like everything had been said. Akane must have felt similarly, because she gave a small, sad laugh, and gestured at Kaname.  
  
"But you don't need to hear my problems," she said, "you've got your own, and they're... we're all so mean. We look at you and see Ranma, and like you said, we're not seeing you, who's there, we're seeing him. Our... friend. And look at me, just dumped all my baggage on you as if you were him, and you're not."  
  
Kaname shook her head. "No, I'm not. But you needed to talk to someone who... looked like him, so I guess that's okay." She gestured at the doors out. "Um, do you mind if we go? I've kind of got to get home and find out if I'm working tomorrow. Because, you know, the computer systems went down on the weekend, and I don't know if they're back up yet. And I've got to ask when Shibby-chan's free, and do housework, oh, and after this morning, I've got to shop and fix up the bathroom, since Hotaru kindly threw water all over me..."  
  
Akane held her hand up again, cutting Kaname off. "Yes. Yeah, we can go. I'm sorry... again." Kaname waved it off as Akane opened the door and they walked out onto the veranda, where Hotaru and Kasumi was watching snowflakes and conversing in low tones. "It was nice meeting you, Kaname Mizuno. I'd like to think we can be friends, if we can ignore my... breakdown earlier."  
  
Kaname nodded. "It's always good to have new friends. For what it's worth... I hope you do get to talk to him, you know?" Akane nodded in return, and Hotaru stood up.  
  
"We're leaving?"  
  
"Uh huh. Kasumi, thank you for a wonderful lunch. It was delicious. Your house, also, is a testament to your hard work." Kaname gave a slight bow. Kasumi returned it with a smile.  
  
"It was a pleasure meeting you, Kaname Mizuno," she replied. "I hope future events won't be too troubling on you."  
  
******  
  
"That was a weird thing to say," Kaname muttered once they were down the road, away from the household and out of earshot.  
  
Hotaru shrugged. "What do you expect from an incarnation of an Elder God?"  
  
"*What?*"  
  
"Kidding, just kidding," Hotaru smiled, reaching out casually for Kaname's hand before realising, remembering, and withdrawing it. Kaname, looking over her shoulder at the Tendo home, unsure still of whether Hotaru was actually joking or not, missed the move.  
  
"I'm looking forward to getting home, though," she sighed, running her fingers through her hair and rubbing at her damp shoulders under her jacket. "Get out of this cold. And I've got to get some groceries on the way home. Oh, and I had another dream. While I was in the dojo with Akane."  
  
Hotaru nodded, thoughts distant, missing that statement at first. Then her head whipped around like it was attached to an engine, and asked, "What?"  
  
"I had a dream. Something about the fight between darkness and light, and heroes in the wrong place." Kaname shrugged. "I think it was about a chess game. A losing one."  
  
"Or one where the white player starts off with a huge disadvantage," Hotaru murmured thoughtfully. "You know, like I was saying the Dark Kingdom and Moon Kingdom? And how Queen Serenity had tipped the balance when she shouldn't have? And now the board, this game, has tipped the other way."  
  
"That was real?" Kaname asked, voice rising in disappearing disbelief. Then, she lowered it again. "No. That's not real. I don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in, but... no."  
  
"Why do you not have a problem believing in giant monsters, but do in having a gender-changing curse? Or, for that matter, opposing magical forces from a time long ago, locked in eternal battle for supremacy?"  
  
"Why can't they all just... get along?"  
  
"It's not that easy," Hotaru muttered. "We hate them just as much as they hate us. There's too much bad blood between us. Oh, and there's that whole 'we like to kill people for no reason' thing they have going."  
  
"Oh," Kaname offered in reply. Then: "Why not just agree to disagree and move away from each other? You know, like it was before."  
  
"Earth was drawn into the conflict by Serenity, against the advice of her advisors at the time." Hotaru shrugged. "I mean, everyone thought I was the big strong protector without a brain... but I had plenty of time to think, and I always thought we were wrong to involve this world in our battle..." She shook her head.  
  
Kaname smiled suddenly, and thought, 'she's crazy. Smile, smile, smile, keep her talking, keep her happy, then RUN.' to herself. Aloud, she said, "That's..."  
  
"You're thinking I'm crazy. But how about I show you?" Hotaru looked back up the street, then pulled Kaname off the road into a walkway between two yards with tall brick walls hiding them from view. From a pocket appeared what looked like a chunky ballpoint biro, with some kind of design affixed to the top. Some small part of Kaname's brain registered it as something from Ancient Europe, probably Rome, but she couldn't place it further than that. She held the pen up high in the air, and yelled, "Saturn planet power make up!"  
  
There was a burst of purple ribbons, and when Kaname's eyes blinked themselves clear of momentary flash-blindness, Hotaru was gone and in her place was... someone who looked exactly the same, but dressed as a cosplaying-schoolgirl. Purple pleated skirt, white bodysuit, purple knee-high lace-up boots, purple sailor-suit collar, bows, and a glaive she had with one end resting on the ground. "Does... does this ring a bell?" she asked, hesitantly, as if suddenly unsure if she'd just made the right decision or not.  
  
******  
  
Saturn watched Kaname carefully. While the woman had some aversion to her previous life at times, even just thinking about it, this day hadn't seemed to be one of them. She'd had more shocks and revelations than she thought Kaname could actually take... more shocks, Saturn guessed, thinking back. She'd been drenched in hot water, had a young girl hitting on her all day long, had lunch with an ex-fiance, and now found out her current girlfriend... well, perhaps ex-girlfriend for the moment... was a magical girl. She watched Kaname's face very carefully, saw the blood drain from it in shock, her mouth open wide. She knew the woman thought she was at least slightly crazy, but perhaps now she might start taking Saturn seriously.  
  
The senshi wasn't used to being humoured until one could find an escape route.  
  
Especially now. It wasn't safe for Kaname. Not as long as Yoshihiro's forces were after the senshi and anyone involved with them. And if Yoshihiro was worried in any way about the senshi, about Ranma in particular as his manipulations of her suggested, then this was an opportune time to strike without fear of retaliation from Ranma.  
  
While he couldn't remember his life and his skills, he was defenceless.  
  
Kaname took a step backwards from Saturn, and the senshi resisted the urge to step forward, to reach out and take her boyfriend into her arms, hold him until he was him again. She knew, deep down, that this wasn't Ranma, though. She could feel it. It was just his body, the meat that had made him. His mind, his soul, was elsewhere.  
  
'Come back, sensei, sempai,' she thought to herself as she tried not to react to Kaname taking another step backwards. She was on the verge of panicking, and there wasn't much Saturn could do without making matters worse.  
  
"You... you're a magical girl!" Kaname announced, like this was something completely unexpected. And Saturn had to admit, for Kaname, this likely was.  
  
"Yes. One of the Sailor Senshi, actually," Saturn replied, nodding, trying not to step forward in urgent affirmation. She felt urges, very strong urges. But she had to deny them, because giving in would make things so much worse...  
  
Kaname took another step back. "And you're... a good guy, right?"  
  
"That's right," Saturn nodded again.  
  
"SoifIsaidIneverwantedtoseeyouagainIwouldn'tright?"  
  
That hurt. Saturn stepped back now, knowing that her pain was written across her face for all to see. Kaname saw it, at least. Saturn watched Kaname take two steps back now, growing in confidence that she wouldn't see this young girl again, that she thought Saturn was a freak still, that she wouldn't have anything more to do with her. That really hurt. She let her transformation drop, and Hotaru looked downcast. "That's right," she said softly, not trusting her voice enough to speak any louder. "I would respect your wishes."  
  
"That's all I wanted ta hear," Kaname said, turning.  
  
Hotaru reached out now, took steps forward, brought an urgent, needing hand down on Kaname's shoulder. "I didn't mean to scare you! I didn't -"  
  
But Kaname was gone, out of the walkway. She sprinted, and even with Hotaru's recent move towards some minor level of fitness that everyone else called normal, she couldn't have caught up even if she'd wanted to. Instead, she watched the older woman leave at speed.  
  
She slumped to her knees, and cried.  
  
******  
  
Nearer her house, Kaname slowed to a stop. Damn. Hotaru still had things at her apartment. She'd either turn up, or perhaps have someone else turn up for them. Hopefully someone else. But Kaname could leave things outside her apartment's door anyway.  
  
Of course, if it was Hotaru who arrived... she was strong enough to kick the door in.  
  
She shivered; the snow was blowing against the back of her legs, and even her good thick leggings weren't keeping the damp cold out any longer. She just wanted to go home... and so she sighed, then squared her shoulders, and headed off for home.  
  
******  
  
The phone in the dorm's lounge rang, and being the only person in the room, watching television, Mitsuki answered. "Yes?"  
  
"Mitsuki, it's me," Hotaru sobbed. Mitsuki felt her hackles rise. Something had gone wrnog today. She felt it had to do with Ranma, but after their last actual encounter... Mitsuki had been... different. She was feeling more proprietry towards him and his, and this Kaname... she wore his face but wasn't him, and if she'd hurt Hotaru...  
  
"What's the matter?"  
  
"It's R- Kaname. I... did some stupid things today, and... and... dammit, Mitsuki, why did I fuck up like this? Why NOW? I was going to go slow with all this but..." Hotaru broke off into a new series of sobs.  
  
"Um... so you want me to...?"  
  
Hotaru spoke jerkily, haltingly, trying to keep her emotion to a minimum for the request. "I... left my stuff... at Kaname's apartment and I don't... think it's a good idea that... I go back there. Can you... can you go pick it up?"  
  
Mitsuki found herself agreeing, and so, after a hurried transformation and the grabbing of a jacket (and on second thought, after looking out a window, some tracksuit pants which she pulled on) Nemesis leapt off the Ai Sou's hill and bounded north towards Shinagawa.  
  
******  
  
Kaname stepped onto the road across from her building, checking for oncoming traffic. Nothing was coming, so she continued across. There was a car parked just up a little, with shaded windows she couldn't see inside, but nothing else. No cats, no dogs, nothing. She entered her building's foyer, and headed for the elevators. She pressed the call button, and looked up at the floor indicator: both lifts were at the top of the building, and would take a little while to come down, so Kaname decided to try working off some of Kasumi's lunch by running up the stairs. Five flights of stairs later, she wasn't even puffed, and she considered trying for the full fifteen. A moment's hesitation, and she kept on running up the staircase.  
  
******  
  
Nemesis touched down lightly outside the building, and headed for the doors to the foyer. But, on the threshold, she stopped and looked around. Something felt wrong. Something felt incredibly wrong. She didn't know what, though... she shook her head, and walked inside. An elevator dinged and the doors opened as she reached them, so she shrugged at providence, stepped inside, and hit the buttno for level five.  
  
******  
  
On the fourteenth floor, Kaname passed a cat, who took off in fright. She reached the fifteenth floor, cheered silently to herself, the minor victory cheering her up after all the stress and shock of late afternoon, and then she started running down the steps again for the fifth floor.  
  
On the fourteenth floor, she passed the cat who'd obviously thought it safe to return, and it took off in fright. Kaname kept running.  
  
The fifth floor door, she exited, and found someone walking to her doorway. Dressed in bulky clothing, somehow sticking mostly to the shadows as if dragging them with it, she didn't recognise the figure. It raised a hand to knock on the door, and with everything that had happened, Kaname was in no mood to wonder why someone dressed threateningly would be wanting to see her. She guessed Hotaru and her magical girl form, but she didn't know. She saw red, and charged.  
  
The yell she gave was vicious, uncontrolled, just sheer anger and stress leaking out. The figure turned, and raised a gloved forearm to block the leap-kick Kaname was making, but stepped back in surprise. "Kaname?" she said.  
  
Kaname didn't recognise the face, but the voice was unmistakable as the woman who'd sworn at her only a week before. She pulled the kick even as she asked, "Mitsuki?"  
  
The figure shrugged the jacket's hood back, and purple hair spilled from it as the occupant twisted her head around a little to work out kinks. "Yeah."  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"Hotaru said you guys had an argument. She asked me to come by and pick her things up. I guess something was said -"  
  
"You know she's a monster?"  
  
Mitsuki was taken aback. "A what?"  
  
"She less than human!"  
  
"This is new. What? Has a vampire been at her, or that bastard Yoshihiro again? I swear, if she turns evil again -"  
  
"She's... she's..."  
  
Mitsuki stopped, her eyes partially unfocussed, as if listening to someone else, then she turned fractionally to face Kaname again. "She told you she's a senshi, right?"  
  
"You know?" Aghast shock.  
  
"Well, duh. I live with her." Mitsuki rolled her eyes. "She's nothing to be scared of, you know. She's... harmless. Except when possessed by ancient pretty-boy evil babies. Or witches. Or when she's on her -"  
  
"You're *okay* with that?"  
  
"How can you not be? If it wasn't for her, you'd be dead! Several times over!" Mitsuki found herself growing heated, Kari wanting to slap some sense into Kaname, but she held back. She knew this wasn't Ranma, knew that Kaname didn't have any memories, no recollection whatsoever of the time he'd spent with Hotaru, let alone the trust he'd placed in her. "Ranma liked her."  
  
"I'M NOT -"  
  
"I know. And I suspect everyone's said that to you a lot. I got told not to say anything, but I'm going to. She's younger than you, Kaname. She's in love with you. You're just... this great big shining star in her sky that she can't help looking to, turning to when she needs reassurance. And after recent events, she needs reassurance from you. Well, from Ranma, but she looks at you and sees him." Mitsuki stepped back and turned away, folding her arms under her chest. "And you know something Kaname? I need him too. He... is a reason for me to stay..."  
  
"Sane?"  
  
Mitsuki nodded. "Yeah. Basically, sane. I suffer a mental condition that's... made worse by... certain aspects of my life. I can become really not nice at times, and the medication I'm on for the condition doesn't always work. It can wear off at the worst of times. And my life, you know, I've killed people. Men. In... bed. But... Ranma... he... sees past that and he trusts me. He trusts all of me."  
  
"You sound like you love him."  
  
"I think I do," Mitsuki admitted, turning around. "For a world so dark and remote, he brings me light, offers me hope of redemption. That perhaps I can make up for sins of the past if only someone tells me I have."  
  
Kaname paused. Then reached behind her with her keys to unlock her front door. "I'll get you Hotaru's things," she said before she slotted the key into the keyhole.  
  
Or, rather, tried to. The door swung open at the slightest touch. Inside was a man in a suit.  
  
"Agent Sato?" Kaname asked, confused. "What are you doing in my apartment?"  
  
He smiled, humourlessly. "I'm here to take you... into custody, Ms Mizuno."  
  
"What am I supposed to have I done?" she asked.  
  
"I'm sure... something will be... fabricated to cover... those questions. For now," he smirked, "all you... need do is do... as I say and come... along quietly."  
  
Kaname stepped back. She'd run once tonight already, and her adrenalin was already up; she was ready to run again. Mitsuki's hand clamped down on her shoulder to stop her from fleeing. "Officer? What's the charge?"  
  
"Conspiracy to... commit treason, perhaps. Or jaywalking." Sato smirked again. "I really... don't know and... really, I don't care." He started walking towards Kaname, but Mitsuki shoved her to one side and took up a combat stance.  
  
"I'm not going to let her go without a fight," she said, waiting for Sato to move into range of her fists.  
  
She wasn't waiting long. He was within her reach before she finished talking. "I'd expect no less... from one such as you..." Two punches, in rapid succession, and he dodged both. Simply bent out of the way as if Mitsuki was standing still. Kaname watched from the sidelines, amazed with the speed Mitsuki was showing, more so with that of Sato's. She threw another barrage of punches, rapidfire, one after the other. Sato deflected two, dodged the rest. One of the deflected shots exploded part of the door frame into sawdust, the other punched right through one of the walls. Finally, she swung a leg in behind Sato's knees, intending to drop him to the ground, but he stepped over her leg as if it wasn't there, and punched her in the chest.  
  
Mitsuki's eyes opened wide, and she flew backwards into the wall opposite. Plaster dust exploded outwards, and the wall caved partly in, Mitsuki looking stunned as she slid down the wall to her feet. Then, as Kaname watched, it was almost like Mitsuki's face changed. "Oh, you just royally pissed me off!" she snarled before leaping back into the fray. She managed to grab the front of Sato's suit, and she bodily swung him up in the air, then smashed him down into the floor, but he shrugged off the attack, jumped to his feet, and continued trading blow for blow. Kaname swore she could feel miniature shockwaves from each punch, but dismissed that as imagination until they passed a window that exploded when Mitsuki impacted a kick in Sato's stomach.  
  
He flew backwards, Kaname just managing to dodge him as he passed her, then strong fingers encircled her wrist, and she found herself being dragged along behind Mitsuki as they sprinted for the stairs. Her face had changed once again, it seemed, and she muttered to Kaname as they ran, "He's too strong, I don't understand it," as they slammed through the doorway into the stairwell. Kaname regained control of her feet, and stumbled a few steps before she got into the rhythm the older woman was setting. Mitsuki let her arm go then, and they continued their headlong dash down the stairs. Above them, the stairwell doorway was kicked in, splinters audibly peppering the wall opposite.  
  
"What's going on?" Kaname asked, feeling proud she wasn't even panting, like Mitsuki was starting to.  
  
Mitsuki shook her head. "I dunno. You recognised him. You tell me."  
  
"I don't know," Kaname admitted, shaking her head also. "He was the man who interviewed me after I was found, set me up with my new identity and job and everything... what's he doing? And how were you throwing..." Kaname's voice trailed off slowly as she watched Mitsuki yank her jacket up over her shoulders and head as she bounced into a landing's back wall to turn her around into the new, last flight of stairs. She saw the same style of outfit as Hotaru had been wearing when she's turned into that... thing, and it was then that she noticed the pleated skirt, previously held down by the jacket, bouncing up and down with Mitsuki's every movement. She fumbled with her pants for a moment as they reached the exit door, rolled her eyes as she gave up and tore them off revealing high-heeled boots that rose halfway up her thighs. Regardless of her tasteless choice in footwear, Kaname noted that Mitsuki, or whatever she was, could make a decent turn of speed in those boots. "You're like *her*."  
  
Nemesis noted that Kaname had stopped following as they crossed the street outside the building, and she stopped, too. She turned and gestured. "Come on! If I can't beat that guy like this, then you don't have a chance! Come on! We've got to get -"  
  
"Maybe I was a terrorist. Maybe that wasn't a monster attack, maybe it was something I did," Kaname said, stepping backwards. Her eyes were wide, and her steps were gaining in size and speed. Momentarily, she'd be running backwards. Nemesis reached forward to stop her, then paused, pulled her hand back.  
  
"Kaname, I know what you're going through. People keep treating you like you're not you. Believe me, I know. I told you I suffer a mental condition," Nemesis said, and forced herself to finish. "I've got a multiple personality disorder. There are over ten of me, all in my head. Fourteen all up, including Sailor Nemesis, or what was her before her world was blasted from the Moon Kingdom. All me. I'm not always aware of the others, and the others aren't always aware of me. But when they're in charge, they're called Mitsuki. No one calls us anything different. They get hurt, because no one can tell them apart. That no one notices the differences, except when one of them makes some major mistake. Right now, we were making a mistake. You're not Ranma. Maybe you never will be. But that's not the point. No matter what my actions, no matter what my motives, know I, and the others like me, the Sailor Senshi, we're the good guys. And so are you. A selfish bastard who's too damned sexy for his own good, but completely oblivious to women, but who tries to do the right thing, the moral thing, the honourable thing. Right now, you're questioning what of your current life is a lie; you've heard about Ranma in bits and pieces and most likely are drawing the wrong conclusions because you can't remember anything of him - but all I can say right now is -"  
  
The door to the apartment building was kicked open, and Agent Sato stood there, hands slightly spread from his hips. He locked his eyes on Nemesis and Kaname, and started to stride towards them, straightening his suit as he did so.  
  
"- that if you don't run, believe me, there may not be another chance - ever - for you to ever think for yourself by yourself ever again!" Nemesis again reached out a gloved hand, an urgent, imploring expression on her face, and Kaname turned, worriedly, to Sato, seeing the grim smile of satisfaction on his face.  
  
"Leaving so soon, Ms Mizuno?" He tut-tutted. "By going with her, you only... add to your crimes against the City. Please, spare me the... trouble of hunting you down - again - and come... with me." He also held out a hand.  
  
Kaname didn't know which way to turn. There was the third option, of course - try to run from both. But she had no doubt they'd both track her down as soon as they'd finished with each other. So, which was the lesser threat?  
  
Agent Sato had helped her, given her a name, a job, an identity - all things she hadn't had before that morning in the temporary governmental offices. He'd given her something special.  
  
He'd given her life.  
  
******  
  
But there she was, naked, standing in the chill breeze, but not noticing, because the sun was shining down on her. Sunlight, warm, bright, strengthening. Like she'd been born again, anew, from some terrible place of darkness and corruption.  
  
Or from underground, a tight cocoon of concrete and iron, soft flesh torn and pulped by chunks of building the size of buses, nuclear fires scouring the city floor clean of life. Giant monsters, trumpeting their victory over the forces of Light, preparing to do... something...  
  
******  
  
Kaname screamed, bloodcurdlingly, and collapsed to the road surface. Sato grimaced, reached down for her to pick her up, but Nemesis' foot stomped down on his hand, pinning him to the road. He looked up, annoyed. "You... don't want to do this," he growled.  
  
Nemesis shook her head. "No, you got that wrong, you really don't want to get between me and her."  
  
"You didn't fare... well against me upstairs, what makes you think... you can do better here?" Sato jerked his arm back, and Nemesis slipped into a ready position.  
  
"Here? I've got room to move. NEMESIS ARCTIC FIRE!" Blistering energies with the concussive force of a speeding locomotive slammed into Sato, who crossed his forearms in front of his face. The blast struck there, and shoved him back along the street, his shoes digging furrows in the road before he hit the footpath and continued digging through that. The blast faded, and he dropped his arms, straightened his tie, and smirked at Nemesis. "No way..."  
  
"I'm afraid you're... obsolete," Sato continued as he walked back towards Nemesis. "With me... here, and you... there... me, the upgraded version of a... heroic figure... you... yesterday's discarded version." He snapped out a kick, which Nemesis tried to block, but couldn't move fast enough to. It connected with her stomach, lifted her from her feet and threw her back twenty metres to slam through a wall. Sato continued after her. "You're a walking anachronism. You... don't even know it. There was a recall... on all defective products... and you were returned. How pitiful." Nemesis staggered to her feet, a little woozy, but shook it off.  
  
Just in time for a devastating roundhouse punch that nearly took her head off. Or broke her jaw. Perhaps both, Nemesis thought, rubbing her cheek gingerly as she climbed to her feet again. He moved like lightning towards her again, and this time, Nemesis knew she couldn't react fast enough, wasn't strong enough, for her to dodge the blow... nor, likely to survive it. She closed her eyes, and waited.  
  
And waited.  
  
She opened her eyes, to see what was taking so long. Her lives had already flashed past her eyes, and she was getting bored now. There was a forearm blocking Sato's blow, and a pair of very determined blue eyes galring up at Sato from beneath his arm.  
  
There were no words from Kaname as she struck, a flurry of blows, punches, kicks, jabs, that Nemesis couldn't make out as anything other than a general blurring of Kaname's small body. Then came the roundhouse kick, almost in slow motion, with all of Kaname's weight behind it - Sato flew backwards and into a wall. Kaname started jogging towards him as he righted himself and picked himself up, picked up speed as he looked up towards her again. He started towards her, but she blurred, vanished, and appeared to his left, throwing an elbow into his unprotected back. A quick backflip across his outstretched arm, and she planted her other in his stomach. His breath gusted out and he collapsed backwards. Kaname stood, victorious above his body, facing towards Nemesis with an angry glare.  
  
She didn't see Sato's hand twitch, didn't hear his catlike moves as he flipped to his feet. But she dropped to her hands and kicked backward with both feet as hard as she could into his stomach regardless. Sato flew again, this time up and back into the wall of a building, smashing through it and disappearing in a cloud of dust. Kaname righted herself again, glared at Nemesis before striding over towards her.  
  
Standing above the collapsed, injured senshi, she was impassive, as if whatever was behind the facade had forgotten how to operate her face. She stared for a moment, then reached a hand down. "Come with me if you want to live."  
  
******  
  
"Is... is he dead?" Nemesis asked, a few blocks away from Kaname's apartment. Kaname hadn't yet returned to normal and was nearly carrying Nemesis along as the senshi's body slowly healed itself. She wasn't entirely sure where they were going, but as far as Nemesis could tell, Kaname was heading towards the Ai Sou.  
  
It would be a long walk.  
  
"He... isn't functioning," Kaname replied.  
  
"He's unconscious?"  
  
"He is no more," Kaname replied.  
  
Nemesis thought some more. "How did you do that? Hotaru said you didn't know much about martial arts. Just -" She fell silent as Kaname stopped and stared coldly at her.  
  
"Do you always talk so much?" Nemesis was speechless. Then, Kaname surprised her even more. "No, you never talked this much during training."  
  
"Ranma...?"  
  
Kaname collapsed suddenly, Nemesis falling on top of her but quickly righting herself and rolling off the woman. What had just happened? She watched Kaname's hair fade from black to its normal reddish-black shade of copper with a small start - had Kaname's hair changed colour? Well, obviously, but what did that mean? She didn't know. But there was only one thing she could do for the moment. She gathered up the unconscious woman in her arms, jumped for the roof of the nearest building, and began the long trip home.  
  
******  
  
In her dream, she smiled. Moving the pieces took a lot of work, when they were as small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things as they were, and she was exhausted from tracking down pieces.   
  
In her dream, she smiled, because, for the moment, the pain and agony stopped as the Dark Thing examined her, made sure she was being leeched as she was supposed to be. Everything must have been in order, because the pain started up again almost instantly.  
  
In her dream, she smiled, because she'd just turned her pawn into a queen.  
  
Just for a second, she smiled. And then the pain continued.  
  
******  
  
Birds. Birds were what Kaname heard when she awoke. Dim sunlight filtered into the room she was in from a curtained window, revealing nothing much in the room bar the futon she lay on. There were some clothes strewn around the floor, and across a chair, but they weren't hers. She panicked, and sat up, scooting back against the wall with a small bump.  
  
Someone heard the noise, came walking towards the room's door. Kaname forced herself to stand, readying herself for an altercation. This wasn't her room, and her memory was fuzzy, and she didn't know how she'd come to be here. Just, wherever here was, she didn't think she'd come willingly.  
  
The door slid open, and there was a tall brunette standing there, in a long green skirt and white skirt. She paused, at seeing Kaname standing upright, but failed to respond to the physical challenge offered by the woman's combat stance, and stepped inside. She held a pile of towels, and offered them to Kaname. "The hot springs out back are nice this time of day. I suggest you go take a dip before dinner."  
  
"How long have I been out?" Kaname demanded as she automatically accepted the towels. The other woman stepped back again.  
  
"Well... Mitsuki brought you in last night. You've been sleeping since then," the woman said, thoughtfully. "If you go for a dip, the others and I won't bother you. Just... hang a sign outside on the door so we know you're in there, or use the men's." She turned to go.  
  
"Wait!" The woman paused, and turned back.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
"Kanagawa prefecture. You're at the Ai Sou," she was informed. "Oh. Uh... we haven't met before, have we? I'm Makoto Kino. In case you're wondering, Sailor Jupiter. I know Hotaru and Mitsuki both said to not say anything because of the fact you seem to be having a hard time dealing with everything at the moment, but... I think in not telling you you're living in a dorm full of senshi at the moment, it's... going to make things even worse." She smiled, cheerfully, happily. "If you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen. That's in that direction," she pointed in one direction, "and the springs are in that direction," and she pointed in the other before nodding a goodbye and leaving. She slid the door back with a toe before Kaname heard footsteps walk away from the door in the direction Makoto had indicated for the kitchen.  
  
So, what to do now? Prisoner of magical girls? Sounded like some lame anime show, and it likely would have been, had Kaname been male, and surrounded by lots and lots of beautiful women. As it was... how many senshi were there entirely? And magical girls besides them... she'd heard in the media that the attack in Tokyo had involved over two dozen magical people defending the city, and she guessed that, by the usual sorts of statistics of female heroes in Japan, that at least three-quarters of them had been women. Or girls, at least. Probably this 'Ranma' that she was supposed to be, if this cursed form was true, knew them all. And was on good terms with a lot of them. And all those women Akane had hinted at...  
  
Oh great. She hadn't just been a playboy, she'd been a megaplayboy. Probably with some weird genetic powers to shoot laser beams from her eyes and make women swoon at each smouldering glance.  
  
She shook herself from fantasy, gathered the towels to her chest, and crept out, heading in the direction of the springs.  
  
They were indeed warm, and lovely at this time of year. They were open-air springs, so there was snow through the enclosures, but the springs themselves were like heaven on a stick. The hot water mixed with the cold air gave Kaname goosebumps as well as a delicious warm sensation that spread through her body, from fingers and toes to her core. She smiled, forgot about magical people and secret government agents, and sank to the bottom of the spring...  
  
******  
  
In the lounge, the senshi perched on couches and chairs, wherever any could find a place to sit. The atmosphere was solid, as Mitsuki nursed bruises along her jawline with an icepack, and Hotaru distantly stroked Luna's back. Artemis sat perched on Minako's knees, sharing glances with Luna at Hotaru as she seemed to be somewhere else completely.  
  
"I still think he's just being lazy. Pretending not to know who he is," Usagi grumped. "I mean, he's this super-dooper martial artist who's been a senshi and, according to Hotaru, a Dark General! So, what power on Earth or in either of the Kingdoms could make him forget who he is? I think he's faking it."  
  
Usagi probably actually believed that, the others thought, but they simply couldn't be sure. After all, Usagi seemed to see Ranma as competition for her Mamoru and probably thought anything that demonised him in their eyes was a good thing. Then again, she was very protective of the other senshi to outside influences, and if Ranma was indeed now part of the Dark Kingdom, then she was acting perfectly within character in trying to alienate his memory as she was.  
  
"He's not a threat," Hotaru muttered under her breath distantly, turning her distant gaze on Usagi. "He's not himself right now. But he will be, soon."  
  
"So he can try killing us now?" Usagi shot back.  
  
"How many times did you lose Mamoru to someone else, Usagi? Or to the Dark side of our forces?" Hotaru started bringing herself into focus. "How many times did you put your life, and everyone else's, at risk, just to save one man? One insignificant man? Sure, he'd helped you - he's helped us all - but ultimately, what does he do? I've listened to you all, and for those first few years, what did he do? Untie you guys when you got tied up, told you to never give up, never surrender, and to fight the good fight regardless." She twisted her face into something that made Usagi wish she could crawl under a rock. It was one of those Saturn looks, the ones that made the young woman look ancient beyond anyone's years. "He was a *cheerleader*, Usagi, and a convenient hostage."  
  
Usagi found her backbone again. "Oh, and Ranma is more of a help? He treats us like -"  
  
"He does help us," Ami said, quietly, from her corner. "Whether he's wanting to or not."  
  
"There's something about him that transcends us," Rei murmured from where she was pressed back into a deep chair. "He doesn't realise it. We don't realise it. There's something inside him that's growing and will make him... better."  
  
Usagi threw up her hands. "The guy is evil! He's a Dark General, and if he's really lost his memories, then shouldn't we do something about that? Make him forget for good, or kill him now while we've got the chance?"  
  
Makoto sighed. "Didn't we have this discussion once before, after Keitaro was turned? I mean, shouldn't we be still trying to save these people who're being altered against their will?"  
  
"Have you ever known Ranma to do anything against his will?" Usagi replied. "He'll have begged someone for this, just so he could fight us, beat us in training."  
  
Hotaru's head lifted. "He doesn't need that power to beat us," she interjected quietly. "Ranma might now be as strong as us, but he's faster and more skilled. He can dodge our attacks, we find it very hard to dodge his. If we weren't nearly invulnerable to physical attacks, he'd have been able to kill us almost from the start. Right now, Ranma's not here, but his body still is. For some reason, it's not acting as it should in some senses, and overly so in others. I don't know why; and neither does the personality that's grown in his absence. Kaname isn't evil; she's just very scared and unsure."  
  
"What, because she's friends with magical girls?" Usagi snorted and rolled her eyes. "Anyone in Japan would kill for that privlege."  
  
Minako shook her head. "Any boy, maybe. She's a girl. With no memories, who's been confronted with a life she can't remember, which suggests she's in danger. She's instinctively responding to her urges to hide from anything that may cause her harm; she's not aware she can fight back. Not against the things that birthed her, anyway. Think about it: she became who she was in the midst of the most devastation Tokyo has faced in... well, ever. Over a million people died in that attack. She woke up unharmed, at ground zero. I'd say she's pretty scared."  
  
Mitsuki added, "She also thinks that maybe there wasn't a monster attack, and maybe it was a terrorist strike. And that she's the terrorist." She looked a little detached, staring down at the small bottle she was capping and uncapping with her free hand. "She's not sure. I don't think she believes it, but she can't help but wonder if she's responsible for everyone's death." She felt someone's hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see Makoto there.  
  
"Are you all right?" she asked. Mitsuki nodded.  
  
"I just need a glass of water," she replied, tipping the pill bottle over and removing a few as she stood and ehaded for the kitchen. "I'll be back."  
  
"I don't believe her story about this govenrment agent, either," Usagi grumbled. "She's strong. And she can fight. So why'd she lose and Kaname came out without a scratch? Huh? 'Cause that girl's a Dark General, that's why! We've got to-"  
  
"Give it a rest, Usagi," Minako sighed, and looked around. "Um... is anyone actually watching Kaname at the moment?"  
  
Makoto shook her head. "She's in the springs, I think."  
  
Mitsuki walked from the kitchen door. "Oh? I should... I should probably go apologise to her. You know, for scaring her unnecessarily and all... be right back," she said, already heading down the hall towards the doors to the springs. Hotaru's eyes followed her curiously, distant again, but she made no move to go out with her, at least until Rei caught her eye. She was wiggling her eyebrows and glancing at the hall. Hotaru got the message, and got up slowly, stretching. She hadn't moved much all day, and now she trudged slowly after Mitsuki.  
  
Making sure she was gone before speaking, Rei said, "I'm worried about Hotaru."  
  
Ami looked up from the medical text she had displayed on her computer. "She seemed pretty down after seeing Kaname yesterday. She hasn't said a lot about it, though. To us, at least. I think she said something to Mitsuki that they're keeping to themselves a little."  
  
"What could that be?" Makoto asked.  
  
Ami shrugged. "I don't know. I would guess perhaps the extremity of her reaction to finding out our Hotaru is a senshi. She still is a young woman, for all her memories of her prior life. And to have expectations of a wonderful reunion shattered by the reality of a woman who's frightened of her... I suspect she is experiencing some -"  
  
She was cut off by a yell from the direction of the springs. Ami, already in action gesturing through her conversation, grabbed her computer in one hand and launched from her chair with the other, but it was Rei who made it into the hallways of the dorm building first. They found Hotaru throwing the door to the springs area open so hard it slammed into the wall to the side and boucned back. Hotaru had made it through, Rei dodged, but it smacked Usagi in the face. She staggered back, scowling, as the others pushed past her, not so much as glancing at her red face.  
  
"Someone is going to pay for this..." she trilled, in a mock-happy voice, before joining the others outside.  
  
Mitsuki was already in the water, drenched as she struggled to lift Kaname from the bottom of the pool, where she lay, calmly, face up. She wasn't breathing, either. Her arms were crossed over her chest, no towel in evidence - wait, there it was, up on the rocks surrounding the spring. But, no matter how much Mitsuki strained, she could not move Kaname from her position. Hotaru splashed into the spring, as did Rei, and Ami rushed over, flipping the computer over from laptop to Mercury mode.  
  
"Help us!" Mitsuki yelled, as the three women in the water tried lifting, to no avail. Usagi transformed into Sailor Moon, and hesitated only a moment before splashing into the water - regardless of her feelings, and her words, she wouldn't have been able to kill Kaname, nor Ranma. Tried to have saved them, yes, no, wait, save them, yes, she would. But not killing. That never solved anything; it only created new problems.  
  
Ami gasped. "She's not breathing!"  
  
"No kidding! HELP US!" Mitsuki returned as Sailor Moon tried helping to shift the woman from the bottom of the spring. Still, no luck. Rei and Hotaru also transformed, and added their extra strength to the equation, but Kaname wasn't so much as rolling under the water.  
  
"I mean, her metabolism has slowed right down! Almost to the point of shutdown. I think..." Ami's voice drifted off.  
  
"Yes, Ami?" Saturn asked, worried. She didn't want to lose Ranma again, and she was already pulling at her gloves, to free her hands to lay them on Kaname.  
  
"I think she's meditating."  
  
******  
  
Under the surface, Kaname stirred. Light played across the surface nicely, in pretty patterns, all shades of blues and whites. Some yellow. She sat upright, breaking the surface of the water. It rolled back like a stop-motion clay version of water, no drips, no flying drops, just a plasticy feel to the liquid. She gazed at the surface of the lake in awe, watching the reflection of the blue, blue sky, and the white, white clouds race across her. Then she looked up into the sky, saw it was dark, stormy.  
  
It was another dream, she knew. But this was... different.  
  
Across from her was a girl. Kaname couldn't place her age. Like Hotaru, she seemed to be young, but ancient. It wasn't anything to do with the face, or the body - Kaname realised it was in the eyes. That stare that has seen everything, anything worth seeing. Experienced the highs and lows life can offer, time and time again.  
  
She had something on her forehead, and with a start, Kaname realised the girl was wearing her VR headset. Even as Kaname recognised it as hers, the girl raised a hand, and without expression on her face, slid her fingers across the words 'Mercury'. Apart from the headset, the girl was naked. Kaname was, also, she realised.  
  
The girl stood, and turned around. Her back was scarred, pitted, and tubing squirmed from her insides down into the depths of the water. Kaname looked away, horrified, but morbidly curious, she turned back. Fluids chugged up some tubes, squirted out through hoses to be taken away. Others climbed up her body, then penetrated her, and ran just below the surface of her skin in parodies or veins and nerves. When she turned back, with the ancient look, Kaname realised that the girl wasn't intolerably old; she'd gotten that look through torture: her body showed the signs of repeated abuse with the equipment running in and out of her. It was memory of pain, every kind of pain imaginable, that showed in her eyes. Negative experiences.  
  
"I thought this was all behind me now," she said, simply.  
  
"Who are you?" Kaname asked.  
  
"I am the Alpha, and the Omega," the girl explained. "I was here to start The World, I will be here to finish The World."  
  
"Is this... is this a computer game? Are we in The World? There's rumours about some guy who's circumvented security -"  
  
"This is not the world you know," the girl continued. "But it is subject to the same rules as the world you know."  
  
"Are... are you one of the gods? Are you God?"  
  
"I am The Beginning, and The Ending."  
  
"That's not explaining anything! What are you? WHO are you? Why am I here? What are you doing to me? To us! To everything!"  
  
The girl motioned for silence, and Kaname fell silent. "I cannot answer your questions. You are not who you need to be. Perhaps in your next life... but then you will not need to be told the answers."  
  
"I need answers!" Kaname was close to tears.  
  
"I came to you before like this, and what I said came true. The power is consuming you. But you have the chance now... as I knew then, that the ability to balance out that great power is within you. You just haven't realised this yet."  
  
"I... I don't know what you're talking about!"  
  
"But I do," said a masculine voice behind Kaname. She turned, and found a man standing behind her who looked similar to her, but with jet-black hair tied up in a ponytail. He wore Chinese clothing, loose black slacks and a red sleeveless shirt. His arms were crossed, just as Kaname's were.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I'm nothing. A figment of my imagination at the moment. A ghost." He grinned at some private joke.  
  
"Ranma Saotome... sempai..." the other girl whispered.  
  
"Geeze, Natsumi, look at you," Ranma said as he stepped past Kaname, wading through the water to reach the girl. He took her into his arms. "I didn't want this to happen to you... I thought you'd be safe."  
  
"I was safe," she replied. "Yet not safe enough. I still had my gift, buried deep down... I was selfish, and didn't give it all to you. Had I done so, perhaps I wouldn't be here now. Perhaps none of us would be."  
  
"Ranma Saotome?" Kaname queried, stepping up behind him and peering around his shoulders at him. "You're Hotaru's boyfriend?"  
  
"Yes," he answered, his eyes not leaving the girl. "God, Natsumi, he mutilated you. I've got to -"  
  
The girl pushed him back with a finger. "I try to set a mood here and you ruin it. Typical. If I'd known you were going to be like this, I'd have toasted you back in that alleyway." She paused. "But... it is good to see you."  
  
"You remember?"  
  
"I remember everything now. I remember it as if it only happened yesterday."  
  
"Natsumi..." That was concern in his eyes, in his voice. Kaname gazed at him. This was the man everyone thought she was? Experimentally, she poked at his chest. "OW! Whaddya do that for?"  
  
"Sorry," Kaname said, automatically pulling back and looking down. "I was just checking. They say I'm you, or you're me, or something, so -"  
  
"Yeah, I'm a guy and you're a girl. I dunno how that happened, but... Natsumi?"  
  
The girl called Natsumi shook her head. "I can't say a lot. Really. I'm being... watched. I've made as many plot holes as I can, though. You've just got to... find them." She smiled at Kaname. "But I can tell you this: he is your next life."  
  
Kaname squinted in recollection and consideration. "The ghosts? The Amnesiacs? These super-strong government agents?" She shook her head. "But... if I don't... know you, don't remember you, and it... hurts to try and I really can't even fathom myself as what people say... and what I can see... you are, how come you're here?" she asked Ranma.  
  
Ranma shrugged. "Dunno. I donno where I've been lately. It's - weird."  
  
"Nowhere." Natsumi's voice startled both, and they looked around at her. "Look, if you two are going to talk, it's going to have to be somewhere else. I can't drag both of you mentally to a pocket dimension for too long without someone noticing something's been set up."  
  
"Is she gonna remember this?" Ranma asked, looking back to Kaname.  
  
Natsumi shrugged. "Hopefully, else I've just maybe endangered every life remaining in Tokyo for nothing."  
  
******  
  
Ami was still frowning at her laptop while the other senshi sat around the edge of the spring, watching Kaname float peacefully on the bottom. There wasn't anything they could do to budge her, so they'd given up, and just started watching, curious as to how long she could stay down there without a breath. Every five minutes or so, a silverly bubble of depleted air would rush to the surface from her lips; yet she still remained motionless.  
  
Ami frowned some more, and tapped a few more keys. Then she pulled her transformation wand out, spun it and transformed, lowering her visor and using that in concert with her computer. "That's strange," she remarked.  
  
"What's strange?" Sailor Moon asked straight away, anxious for something to break the monotony. Jupiter hadn't even wanted to go bring some biscuits out for the other senshi while they waited for some sign from the underwater woman, and Sailor Moon was desperate for anything to happen.  
  
"There's not nearly enough data on Kaname," Mercury continued.  
  
Minako asked, "What do you mean? Like you don't have a background or history? That's understandable because -"  
  
Mercury shook her head, "No, not that. I have a pulse, temperature, oxygen levels, CO2 levels, blood pressure, some other statistics... and nothing else."  
  
"'Nothing' else?" echoed Saturn curiously, eyeing the prone woman.  
  
"This is all digital information," Mercury remarked. "Everything about her. She's not real. And there are large gaps where there should be massive amounts of data... memories, experiences, skills... it's almost as if she's a character in The World..."  
  
"What?" Nemesis asked from Kaname's side. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Exactly that. She's a character from a computer game."  
  
"A computer game," Sailor Moon repeated. "What kind of game?"  
  
Mercury shook her head. "That doesn't matter. What matters is... she's not real."  
  
"Why should that matter?" Saturn asked. "I mean, she thinks she's real, she's solid enough, she's..."  
  
"This is starting to sound really familiar," Sailor Moon remarked out loud.  
  
"Here, here," added Mars. "Keitaro's little friend, remember?"  
  
Saturn nodded. "I remember. I was outside, remember? But... Kaname is what that was like? The characters... monsters you fought in the game?"  
  
"No," Mercury responded after a moment's consideration. "Those monsters weren't modelled to have things like oxygen capacity and levels, blood toxicity, digestion times and modelled digestive systems... Kaname is a mathematical model of a normal human, with some... advanced abilities. I suspect a hold-over from Ranma when he was transformed into a monster himself."  
  
"It wasn't like that," Saturn said quietly. "It was still him. I could feel it -"  
  
"Yeah, like you felt that Yoshihiro?" Sailor Moon threw in, acidly.  
  
Saturn turned cold eyes on the Princess. "I felt the surge of... lust for him, yes. However, that was all I felt with Yoshihiro, because I was wanting Ranma to look at me and pay attention to me. That was what made me weak there. Ranma was... different. Whole. Still himself." She gestured at Kaname. "I don't know... what..." She fell silent, her mouth remaining open as she stared behind Sailor Moon.  
  
******  
  
"I've got to go now," Natsumi said, suddenly. "Ranma, help me. Again, please. Kaname, please, trust him, trust what you feel with him, trust what he makes you see, do and feel. Trust him."  
  
"And trust the senshi," Ranma remarked suddenly, then he was gone, mist above the water blowing away. Natsumi, too, was gone, and then Kaname felt very cold, very wet, and found, while she was underwater suddenly, she couldn't move.  
  
******  
  
"What?" Sailor Moon asked, waiting for Saturn to reply. But she noticed Nemesis, and Mercury, were also looking behind her, and the others turned as Sailor Moon did. There, at the door, was Ranma, stepping through the still-closed door. She was able to see through him, see the door still closed, yet he acted like it was open and he had opened it. He saw something, in the springs, and bounded towards the water. Sailor Moon flinched as he shot through her, but she felt nothing. Mercury, caught by surprise, was only now starting to look down at her computer, beginning to tap keys -  
  
Ranma reached into the water, and pulled Kaname up from the bottom of the pool, where she coughed and spluttered and spat up a mouthful of water. Her eyes were very large and frightened, but then she saw Ranma, looking panicked above her face even as he draped something she couldn't see across her torso. He started mouthing something to her, then. She couldn't make out most of it, but she felt it was important to what was happening, what he was saying. She caught a few of the mouthed words, though... "...passing by... sick... moaning... you'd hit... splashing of water... sorry... one of the girl's...".  
  
He started, and his eyes darted to one of the hands holding Kaname up, and then shot back to Kaname's face, like he was listening to her. Then he started to pull back, but froze... his eyes drifted into the distance, and then he vanished.  
  
"What the hell was that?" Venus asked.  
  
"An image, I would guess," Mercury hypothesised, running her fingers over her keyboard.  
  
Nemesis and Saturn both looked pale. Mars was strangely silent.  
  
Kaname looked around at the women in sailor suits surrounding her, and quietly decided now was not a good time to scream Instead, she asked, "Did anyone else see that?" She was answered in emphatic nods. "Oh good. So the dream I just had might actually mean something."  
  
"Dream?" Venus asked, turning her head to gaze in confusion at Mars. "What on earth are you thinking about? I can feel that from here..." Mars shook her head, blushing now, and looked away.  
  
Kaname stood, reaching for her towel, a little self-conscious. Sailor Moon seemed to be awfully interested in her body, for sure. "Yeah. About a girl with my VR headset and lots of tubes and pipes poking into her... like something out of Spriggan..." While Kaname talked, Mercury frowned again, and turned her computer to Mars. "She was talking about worlds and dimensions and people watching her and -"  
  
"- And it makes sense," Mercury concluded. Kaname looked up at her for explanation. "None of us are real. I have just checked. We're all digital entities in a digital world."  
  
"I am *not* fighting digital monsters again," Sailor Moon declared haughtily. Mars coughed in agreement, still blushing bright red. Venus slid over to sit next to her and whisper in her ear. Mars blushed deeper and nodded. Saturn rolled her eyes and turned to look back at Kaname, who had turned her gaze to face her. Nemesis, also, was watching Kaname. "I mean, it's most undignified."  
  
"Yes, yes, Usagi, very much so," Jupiter agreed, to shut her up for the moment while Mercury explained her statement. Behind them, Luna and Artemis jumped through a window to see what was taking so long. They padded up to the senshi, sat down, and listened.  
  
"I think... I don't know for certain," Mercury added, "but I think we were all transferred into a digital realm when that monster... exploded. Perhaps. When the monster grabbed the tower, he let out a huge pulse of energy that discorporated the atoms of everything. That would have created a huge amount of energy, and if augmented with Mercurial computer systems, from the Moon Kingdom, there is a possibility that someone with sufficient proficiency in data management could manipulate a system with the right receivers into taking the data attached to the atoms in the moment before destruction and channel that into a hyperdigital representation of reality. Technically, making everyone into a data structure that inhabits a set region of a subspacial pocket equation."  
  
"We're all dead?" Nemesis asked, turning her head around to face Mercury.  
  
"To the people of Earth? Yes. And Tokyo is most likely physically destroyed. Little more than a hollow in the ground. I suspect the explosion did much more damage than we saw." Mercury raised her visor and dropped her transformation before slumping to the ground. "Who knows what is going on outside the system?"  
  
Kaname almost raised her hand, but thought the better of it. She didn't actually know, but her dreams, when considered with the theory Sailor Mercury had just put forward, made some sense. She guessed the person she was in them - she guessed that girl she'd seen in her vision whlie underwater - was the person who had made this event possible. That made sense of some of her comments. Particularly about her being the beginning and the end... but... "If we're all dead, is there any way we can... come back to life in the real world?"  
  
Ami shook her head. "I do not know. I would assume that our full data is being stored somewhere, but I do not know for certain. That Tokyo and we are stored, so to speak, like data on a CD. The explosive energies were the binding force of the atoms letting loose... similar to a huge nuclear detonation. But all the information to rebuild everything... I believe that would be stored somewhere. There's no explanation for us otherwise."  
  
The other senshi dropped their transformations, and almost looked defeated. Rei grumped; "We can't stop a thing while we're in here, can we? We're just out of the way."  
  
Hotaru, although troubled by the possibility, also looked thoughtful. "Why are we all still alive, then? I know Yoshihiro. A little, at least. He wouldn't have kept us here if he didn't have some other use for us in mind."  
  
Something struck Kaname, and she disagreed slightly with the statement, but she couldn't say why. She got out of the spring fully, dried herself with her towel, then dressed quickly, still listening to the girls as they talked. The black cat with the women caught her eye, and Kaname smiled and waved at it. It smiled back and nodded it's head at her. Curious. Kaname wasn't so scared now. Something of that dream, that vision, had calmed her fears. There were magical people. They were trying to fight something evil. She didn't have to fear her past now. If only she could remember it...  
  
Ami shook her head. "I don't know why. But I would assume we must be going to be used as a power source. That whatever this fellow wants to do now... he needs lots and lots of living people. Technically, here, we live." She shrugged.  
  
"Perhaps," Luna suggested, making Kaname jerk as she was pulling her pants on and tripping over onto her face in the background, "he is operating in both worlds? This agent Sailor Nemesis fought last night seems to be a monster himself."  
  
"I don't think so," Mitsuki said, also shaking her head. "If Ami's right about this, and about us all being chunks of data, then whatever stats he's got are probably just so high above ours it's not funny."  
  
"But he can be beaten," Kaname said, suddenly. Then she blushed as everyone turned to face her. "I mean, apparently I beat Agent Sato up last night. So, you know, that kind of means it can be done."  
  
"I saw this in a movie once," Usagi said, suddenly perking up. "About people who lived in a computer world, where evil computer programs wanted to rule the human world. It was called Tron -" She ouched as Minako whapped her around the head. "Hey! I'm just saying, maybe we should look at movies for inspiration! It's a start and it gets us doing something about the problem..."  
  
"Usagi may be right," Artemis conceeded. "We have to start thinking of a way to tackle this new problem. This is probably why there haven't been any monsters over the last six weeks. But we need ideas of how to solve this before we can start working on solving the problem. So, does anyone else have ideas?"  
  
Usagi did, but no one wanted to try to catch the 'flu and then sneeze on Sato to find out if he was susceptible to virii.  
  
Luna sighed. "All right. It's been a long day. It's also getting very cold out here, even right by the springs. Let's call it a day and get an early night. We've got a lot to think about, starting from tomorrow..."  
  
******  
  
Sato leant back in his chair, apparently none the worse for wear a week after his fight with Kaname. The Mizuno woman hadn't been seen since that night, but the fact she was in contact with at least one of the rogue variables wasn't a good sign, not to Sato. He liked... order. And these senshi were anything but part of the natural order of the system. If it was up to him, he'd have been tracking these senshi down and deleting them, but it wasn't. Now that there was actual proof rather than strong supposition that they were loose in the system, Sato hoped Yoshihiro would give orders for them to be dealt with; after all, the Master couldn't take the chance that something in the system's makeup would allow the senshi to reverse what had been done. Sato wasn't entirely sure, but the fact that it had been a Mercurian computer system that had allowed this transferrence from the physical world to take place suggested that there could exist a system that would reverse the effects.  
  
However, the energy necessary would likely be staggering - in the physical world, it had taken the destruction of a large part of Tokyo - and that probably couldn't be replicated in the system.  
  
There were too many suppositions and too much guesswork in those thoughts for Sato's liking. He leaned forward again, gathered his paperwork together and began shuffling through it once more.  
  
No more ghosts. Since that last Friday evening, or, rather, mid-Saturday afternoon, there had been no reports of these so-called 'ghosts'. Sato had no idea what they were, but guessed it had something to do with the Amnesiacs. There had to be a reason they were without memory; he suspected that perhaps it was more to do with the Ghosts than anyone had realised.  
  
He changed piles of papers, skimming through reports from the physical world. Construction reports, mostly, and their system analogues. Interesting. Another sixteen weeks, and construction of Project Tokyo would be complete in both worlds, upon completion of which, the Master's plan could begin.  
  
And here, Sato paused. If there was anything the senshi could do to stop the Master's plans, if there was any method they could employ to find a way for themselves back into the physical world (assuming they realised that they were now digital entities in a digital simulation of their world, but here Sato was assuming the worst) it would be through the disruption of the constructions. Without them, the Master's plans couldn't come to fruition. Both constructions had to be complete, in RealTokyo and SimTokyo. Sixteen weeks was almost too long for construction to proceed, but there were rules in the system, unfortunately, rules that had to be followed. Sato was bound by them as much as anyone else - even the senshi.  
  
That Kaname woman, though - Ranma. It seemed she wasn't quite as bound by them as she should have been... there should have been no way her statistics should have allowed her to move like that, let alone pummel him as she had, and yet she did. Sato made a mental note to investigate the problem further. Perhaps there would be a method to... block her manipulation of the system, or at least a method of manipulating the locality to make such attempts useless.  
  
The phone on his desk rang. It was an old, black design that Sato liked for its ungraceful lines and shining plastic finish, and most amusingly, when the phone rang, the receiver jiggled from the sound on its cradle. He let it ring twice, as was his routine, then picked it up. "Yes?"  
  
"Construction on the Doorway has slowed due to bad weather conditions in Tokyo," said a voice at the other end, briskly, with no preamble. It didn't matter; Sato knew his Master's voice.  
  
"How long... will the project be delayed?"  
  
"Only a few days. Perhaps a week," came the measured response. "Umiko is preparing a press release to be delivered to the government as we speak."  
  
"How does the... government's investigation into the... destruction of Tokyo proceed?"  
  
"It has been hampered somewhat by our operatives in the Diet and related sub-organisations. I suspect others are watching with interest... in the possible applications in war of giant monsters." Yoshihiro actually snorted. "I cannot believe the audacity of these humans sometimes. Harnessing monsters, indeed. Sogal Island is full of them, and yet all they can do is make sure they don't leave the area bound by the reef there. And they would attempt to use one as a weapon of war?" He snorted again, and returned to the subject. "I think those investigations can be curtailed. And in a little over sixteen weeks, the point will be moot."  
  
"Are... plans being made... to integrate the population of... your homeworld into Earth's standing population?" Sato asked.  
  
He could already picture Yoshihiro shaking his head and smiling. "No. No such attempts shall be made. With the unlimited reserves from the Dark Kingdom under my command... the Earth will not stand a chance. We shall have a physical home once again."  
  
"The Seal... must first be... broken," Sato reminded his Master.  
  
"Indeed." A pause. "Do you have any further information relating to activities of the senshi and their... charge?"  
  
"No. No, I do not. And that... is troubling me. Can I have... your permission to hunt them down?"  
  
There was silence on the other end. And then: "No. Not for the moment. They may yet serve a purpose. Yet... we can't leave them to their own devices. Send an Agent or two to deal with them as you see fit from time to time. Yet... don't kill them. Yet."  
  
"And if an... accident should... occur?"  
  
A vocal shrug. "Accidents happen. But best not too often. I will ring again in the next few days with an update on construction schedules." Then there was nothing but dialtone to show Yoshihiro had hung up on his end. Sato likewise returned his handset to its cradle, and smiled.  
  
Accidents, hmmm? Yes.... but where to find a senshi when you need to play with one?  
  
******  
  
Two weeks later, after Sunday morning training, Kaname relaxed in the men's hot springs. She still wasn't certain of the senshi one hundred percent, and while she was now certain her life wasn't in danger from any of them - heck, even Usagi could cook, it just looked terrible - she was still unsure about living around people who'd known her Before and who knew more about her past than she did.  
  
Okay, she knew about Ranma Saotome now, and she didn't like him. He was an arrogant, selfish jerk. Even if, according to Hotaru, he'd grown up a lot, he was still a jerk. That was something Kaname wanted to change. If anything of her survived getting him back, *if* she got him back, that was what she wanted changed. That final bit of maturity. She hoped, anyway.  
  
She knew about Ranma, and she knew more about the senshi. She knew that Mitsuki, for example, suffered from some huge mental trauma that had created a bunch of personalities that weren't necessarily anything like Mitsuki herself. A week ago, Mitsuki had started referring to herself in the third person while she stretched every combat skill Kaname had learnt to their limits. Even her speech patterns changed, and Kaname swore blind that her hair had fallen differently, that her eyes had changed colour a little, that she was subtly, but completely, different. Later, she'd put it down to a personality shift to something... someone... that had wanted to test her. It had been grudgingly impressed, although Mitsuki was fighting unenhanced by her senshi form, like the others fought when they sparred together. Each had to drop their transformation when they sparred with Kaname, though, because they'd quickly found out that however she'd saved Mitsuki... Sailor Nemesis... Kaname couldn't repeat that change. She didn't actually remember much of it, actually. It was like she'd been someone else. Which also worried her a lot. But then, Mitsuki had said later it was Ranma who'd been speaking, and she guessed, if she was a part of him, he technically was a part of her.  
  
That whole split personality thing made her feel closer to Mitsuki than the other senshi.  
  
So here she was, after the high-energy sparring that had gone on that day, and to be honest, she felt good. Damned good, for someone who'd been slammed into walls a few times, and slid over in the snow more than once. She guessed the springs had something to do with that, the hot water working magic on sore muscles and bruises that were, even now, fading. She guessed by later afternoon, she'd have no ill-effects, if not sooner. She'd noticed she healed faster than even the senshi - well, when Hotaru wasn't working her voodoo, anyway.  
  
She looked around the enclosure. The men's springs were much smaller than the women's area, as the dorm was primarily an all-girl's dorm. Yet, Kaname guessed that previous managers must have been male, even before Ranma, because the area did exist. If the place was an all-girls dorm, she couldn't see any other reason that readily came to mind. Kaname shifted on the rock she was sitting on, feeling it dig into a bruise on her backside, reflecting that the women's springs were much more comfortable, but she'd grown rather uncomfortable in there with the other senshi, seeing as Rei, Hotaru and Mitsuki often stared, making her feel very uncomfortable. Minako just found it amusing.  
  
They didn't venture into the men's area, so that morning after practise, when everyone had headed for the springs, Kaname had diverted from the others and headed into the men's area. She'd heard the muted tones of conversation from the other side of the bamboo wall separating the two areas, but she hadn't paid any attention to it; it was just noise. She tried to focus everything out, so she could meditate, try and reflect on what she'd learnt that morning in sparring - the senshi weren't very good teachers, but Kaname was learning by watching. She didn't think half of what they were doing was actually martial arts - it looked more like something you'd see in anime - but the senshi assured Kaname that they had been taught all this by Ranma. So Kaname soaked up what she could, combined that with what she knew already, and tried to match the more-experienced senshis' speed and ferocity. Oftentimes, she was caught offguard by a move, but hardly ever caught the same way twice. Although, it had to be said, Kaname seemed to be better at avoiding punches and kicks than she was at landing them.  
  
She shifted on her rock again as the voices melted away on the other side of the bamboo. Water slowly splashing over that side suggested someone was still in there, and Kaname assumed it was Rei, seeing as she liked her private time for 'meditation'. Over the next few minutes, though, she became aware of something else going on with the splashing. Not the soft whispers of pleasure she expected, but something else she couldn't make out; there was just a little too much splashing.  
  
Kaname was startled by the doors to the men's area opening, and Mitsuki stalked in, discarding her towel and the few items of clothing she must have been pulling on in the anteroom to the women's area before she slipped into the water. She paused for a moment, a soft glow of pleasure lighting her face up as the warm water took away the biting cold of the snow and cool breeze blowing into the enclosure, then moved over to sit beside Kaname.  
  
"So. How far are you willing to go with a person?" Mitsuki asked, the subject coming from nowhere that Kaname could ascertain, and she felt at a loss with regards to an answer.  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"You know, physically." Mitsuki raised an eyebrow in query. "How much would you be willing to do? Kiss someone? Hug them? Maybe be groped, or perhaps you might wanna, you know, caress an inexperienced kid who needs the security of a woman? Perhaps you'd like to just... you know... lie back, spread your legs, and let someone who knows what they're doing go to town."  
  
Kaname blinked, then blushed. "What right have you got to ask that kind of question?" she demanded in a shaking voice.  
  
"Oh, relax," Mitsuki waved Kaname down. "I don't want to do anything to you. Well, not me. Mitsuki, now, Mitsuki, she wants me to say something else. Anything else, actually. So, yeah, I find you very appealing. But then," she said, shrugging, "I'm a guy, so what do you expect? You're a naked woman, what guy who isn't into guys isn't into that?" The question was rhetorical, but Mitsuki answered herself anyway. "Tetsuya, actually. He's not gay or anything, just respects Mitsuki's right to make decisions about her body, and she's not into lesbianism...s...istic stuff. You know. Kinda like you, I guess. Man in a woman's body, but the woman doesn't remember it. Gotta be hard on the libido. I mean, you know Ranma's into girls. And that perhaps you won't be in control all the time. And it's Ranma's body and stuff... so he's kinda in charge, right?"  
  
"No..."  
  
"Yeah, I'm right. Trust me on this," Mitsuki said seriously, touching Kaname on the arm and peering into her eyes in a show of certainty and experience. "We all have this knowledge. If Mitsuki ever figures out who's in charge properly, well, we could all be in trouble, so mostly, most of us don't give her reason to think about it."  
  
"... Who are you?"  
  
"Me?" Mitsuki pointed to herself with a thumb. "I'm Shuuji. I'd say pleased ta meet cha, but you know, we've met already. Kinda. I've checked you out in the other springs." She jerked the same thumb at the bamboo wall.  
  
"So... what are you doing in here, then? Hitting on me?"  
  
"Nah... nah, not at all." Mitsuki shook her head emphatically. "I mean, sure, most of the others'n me, we'd all like to, but Mitsuki..." She took a deep breath, then sighed. "She's scared of saying things sometimes. Most times. So it's us, usually, you know? And she kinda wants you to go next door and comfort a crying young girl who's lost her boyfriend, and thinks who he's become has just turned her back on her."  
  
"Hotaru..." The sounds from the next spring snapped into place: the girl there was sobbing quietly, under the motions of the water. After the senshi had left the springs, that was probably the most private place in the dorm.  
  
"Bingo. Nice as you are, and as much as we kinda feel you make the Earth move for us, we, well, want you to go next door, make things right with her."  
  
"I'm not having sex with her," Kaname said in a firm, clear voice, shaking her head.  
  
"Didn't say you had to, right? Just..." A change swept over Mitsuki, very subtle. Like she changed her clothes, Kaname thought, and realised it was someone else now. The way she shrank into her shoulders suggested she wasn't comfortable talking about this very much. "J-j-just go in t-there and c-c-comfort-t her," Mitsuki finished, before blushing furiously and climbing from the spring and leaving the area at a fast clip, leaving Kaname in thought.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru wiped at her face futilely for a moment when she heard the door open before realising her arms were as wet as her face, and simply dunked her whole head underwater to erase any obvious evidence she'd been crying. She bit back on a few sobs, her breath choking as they tried to force their way out, and she moved until she sat with her back to the doors, hoping whoever it was who'd entered was either leaving again directly, or, if they climbed into the spring again, would be sitting behind her and not see her eyes.  
  
Hopefully.  
  
There was a pause after some padded steps, and the swirl and swish of water as someone entered the springs. Hotaru tracked the person's movement by sound, then lost it somewhere opposite her. She chanced opening her eyes, to find herself staring into Ranma's bright, happy eyes.  
  
Hope surged in her heart, then died as she realised it was Kaname rather than Ranma, that her hopes and dreams had been dashed - again - and she looked away.  
  
But Kaname sat, with a moment's hesitation, next to Hotaru. Very next to Hotaru. So next to Hotaru that Hotaru felt like she'd burst out of her skin of Kaname so much as moved. She reminded herself she was older than Kaname ever would be, and the cold, clinical side of herself - Saturn - chidded herself for reacting like a horny teenager, but then sighed and gave up, most likely because Saturn herself realised Hotaru wasn't much more than just that.  
  
"So," Kaname said. It was very neutral, both in quality and delivery.  
  
"Yes. So," Hotaru repeated, also neutral by way of hormonal surges.  
  
"I understand you've been crying," Kaname continued.  
  
Hotaru felt herself sag, and the elation of only moments before deserted her.  
  
"I, um, I'm not Ranma. But, um, you should know that... well..." Kaname's voice trailed off.  
  
"Yes?" Hotaru asked in a small voice.  
  
Kaname wrestled with herself for a full minute before turning, grabbing Hotaru's chin and guiding the younger woman into a kiss. It lasted for more than a few seconds, Kaname obviously giving it consideration, Hotaru trying desperately to inject her previous relationship into Kaname by way of staggeringly huge amounts of telepathic images, before they pulled apart. Hotaru touched her lips cautiously. Kaname rubbed hers idly. That image fell like a lead weight in Hotaru's stomach.  
  
Then, "That wasn't too bad," Kaname conceeded. "Like kissing... a mother... I think..."  
  
Hotaru chuckled, despite herself, then caught herself as she caught the twinkle in Kaname's eye.  
  
"Hotaru, look. It's like this." Kaname sighed. "I'm not Ranma right now. You know that, I know that. I've said things that have hurt you, and I hope you can understand why. I don't consider myself a lesbian or anything - because, you know, I suspect Ranma may only have had a rudimentary idea of sex, and I've got more than that..." Kaname sighed, and continued. "And I don't think Ranma, from what you guys have said about him, I don't think he had thought about what would have happened if you two had had sex while he was a woman. If he was stuck like that. And I'm heterosexual, I think, I mean I haven't had a chance to find out yet, and I think I'm confusing the issue even more here." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she stared at Hotaru directly to make sure there would be no misunderstanding. "I... draw the line at sex, okay? No sex. Not in the slightest. Someone else's virginity isn't mine to throw away. And I think I've got to respect Ranma's wishes here, since if he comes back... well, anything I start'll likely finish, you know? So I'd like to work at something I'll be remembered fondly for rather than cursed for not being able to have it continued."  
  
Hotaru nodded. "Yes, sempai," she said, not actually believing her ears and thinking she'd slipped under the water and that someone was going to start resuscitation procedures fairly soon.  
  
"And - and you know, let me... um... let me lead with new things. Because I don't know if I'll like them yet. Or stand them. Or... you know, be able to accept them if they're thrown at me. You've had time to consider a relationship with a woman, I haven't, and yeah, kissing I can handle, I think, and... and..."  
  
"You don't have to explain, sempai," Hotaru said quietly, shyly now that everything had apparently been resolved. She nodded. "I'll respect your wishes. Just... please... don't hurt me like you did the other week again?"  
  
Kaname reached out and stroked Hotaru's wet hair back across her forehead. "I'll try not to."  
  
Hotaru seemed to be happy with that, and shifted to sit up against Kaname for a moment, cheek pressed against the copper-haired woamn's shoulder for scant seconds, before she turned and kissed Kaname's shoulder and climbed out of the springs to grab a dry towel and head inside. She paused at the doorway, looking back in.  
  
"Thank you, sempai," she said. And then she disappeared inside.  
  
******  
  
Kaname found dinner that evening... interesting.  
  
After Hotaru had left the hot springs, she'd stayed away from Kaname the rest of the day, finding reasons to be elsewhere. Kaname thought the younger girl was giving her space to make the first move, but dinnertime proved that to be a lie. Seated around the table, Hotaru had insisted on sitting opposite Kaname, almost pushing Rei from her feet as she went to sit down in that position. Rei grumbled, but sighed, shook her head, and moved somewhere else; it seemed as if everyone else had guessed something was up.  
  
Makoto gave them both weird glances as she served dinner, leaving the bowls of steamed rice unopened while she brought out the various toppings and side dishes from the kitchen quickly. Hotaru's eyes were locked straight on Kaname's from the moment she had sat down, though, and remained locked on until she quickly picked some dinner from the table's centre. Once she had her dinner in front of her, she thanked Makoto for the meal with the others, but her eyes were focussed on Kaname once more.  
  
Kaname came to realise during the meal Hotaru had locked herself away to avoid doing something stupid.  
  
And she also realised that Hotaru hadn't yet realised that locking herself up hadn't cooled her down, but had in fact done the complete opposite: she was sending off waves of something almost palpable. Minako looked interested, eyes darting back and forth between each of the two women, and Kaname, now knowing something of the senshi, realised why Minako occasionally sent the women those gazes and quick glances - the senshi of love picked up on a lot more than she let on.  
  
After the main course, Makoto cleaned up, with muttered help from Rei, who had just taken to avoiding Kaname's pleading glances to distract Hotaru. Hotaru fidgeted on her chair as the dessert came out, and then Kaname felt something under the table. Hotaru had just kicked her, and was looking smug and shy at the same time, by way of slyness. Kaname groaned inwardly. She should have handled Hotaru differently, she knew, but kissing her had seemed the right thing to do at the time. She should have gone slower. But no, she'd had to go set the pace at a high level. Nasty, nasty woman, she kicked herself mentally. But she sighed, and smiled back at Hotaru, raising her eyebrows to say, not now, wait. Hotaru pouted, but then sank into something resembling normalacy, and dessert was indeed what Kaname had come to know as 'normal' in a dorm full of senshi. There were no food fights, although one did threaten to break out between Usagi and Minako over men, and there was no sparring, apart from the light verbal barbs traded between Makoto and Mitsuki over who was doing to clean up afterwards. Kaname forestalled the argument by simply getting up and cleaning up herself.  
  
Once the plates and bowls had all been cleaned, and left-overs placed in the refrigerator, Kaname retired to the lounge to watch some television, if there was anything much on. Television had returned almost to normal, but there was little coming in from overseas, so Kaname couldn't watch any new episodes of the American law dramas she'd come to enjoy, simply because the new stock had been run already. They were only repeating those shows now, for the second time, it seemed. So Kaname joined in with Mitsuki, who'd taken her medication for the evening, and watched anime.  
  
This particular show seemed to be about giant robots that joined together to form an even more powerful giant robot, and didn't seem to be too bad from a technical standpoint, as the designs were almost real enough to look as if they could exist if only someone put money towards them. The characterisation, on the other hand, was laughable, but Kaname kept silent on the matter. After a while, she began to enjoy the simplicity of the characters for what they were, ciphers of stereotypes. The fact that Kenji was an arrogant, egotistical jerk who thought his Mega Robo could triumph over anything by itself reminded Kaname of how people described Ranma, and how she'd experienced him in that one vision. The fact that the Mega Robo could often beat many of the lesser, non-boss-type monster characters suggested Kenji wasn't far off in his claims of ego and pride, but she suspected by the end of the series, that would be his downfall. Himeko, the Princess, was the token female. Stupid, a complete airhead who giggled too much and missed all of the character interaction going on around her, she was very kind-hearted and friendly, reaching out to those in need and giving her life, or nearly going that far, very often. As far as Kaname could tell, she hadn't actually died yet. She piloted the agile Rabbit Robo, a fast, light combat unit. Kyoto, nicknamed because he came from the nuked city of the same name - he was the only survivor - piloted the extra-heavy Gorilla Robo, armed with nova cannons on the shoulders and a double-punch that could tear enemy droidians apart. Kyoto was the mechanic of the group, slow to anger, but a raging torrent of emotion once roused. There was the street urchin, Shinji, who'd been found in ruins clutching an activation key for the Tank Robo, the last giant robot of the team, able to transform from tank to robot and back. Shinji had lived a hard life, and was assailed by voices in his head.  
  
Kaname realised why Mitsuki was transfixed by the screen with that revelation. She guessed, though, that Shinji's voices were in fact created by Biolumass, the evil scientist working for Lord Dread in the deadly Waste Zone, as they obviously had the same voice actor.  
  
This particular episode had captured Kaname's attention for other reasons, too: most notably that the Ultra Robo team (the name of the combined giant robot form) had been removed from their reality and placed into a parallel dimension where instead of being heroes, they were now criminals on the run from the Universal Planetary Hegemony and were separated from their giant robots. Of course, it was complete and utter rubbish, with plot holes appearing everywhere, but it was an interesting take on their current predicament.  
  
As the credits started rolling, and Himeko's voice actress starting belting out a pop song - Kaname's eyes opened as she saw Megumi Hayashibara's name scroll past in the cast list, wondering who actually liked her squeaky voices, considering her roles were so widespread - Mitsuki leaned over the edge of her chair. "So, what did you think?"  
  
Kaname wasn't sure what was expected of her. Conversations with Mitsuki often went off in directions she couldn't fathom, but she gamely took a stab at what she thought Mitsuki was talking about. "I think that Biolumass is the person making the voices in Shinji's head," she hazarded.  
  
Mitsuki pursed her lips for a moment in thought, then nodded. "Yeah. You spotted the voice actor too?" Kaname nodded. "Mmmm. Think that's what's wrong with me?"  
  
"There's nothing -"  
  
"Pfffft. I know I have voices, and people, in my head. Nothing to be that embarrassed about now. I mean, had them there for the last ten years, more or less." Mitsuki shrugged. "And I know why, too. Kind of. Things I'm still not comfortable talking about... with you." She looked at Kaname strangely, as if trying to send a telepathic message to the woman about some subtle subtext there. "But," she conceeded with a glance back at the mercifully muted television, "I almost wish it was some evil person speaking in my head. If it was just voices, I might accept that idea, you know," she said, turning back, "but... it's not just voices. They're there all the time, and they're like... mini-me's. Versions of me that... aren't complete. Fragments of my mind. Each tends to follow some aspect of my personality or mental state... Shin, for example, is my intelligence. She's my intelligence let loose, with access to all my memories, everything I've learnt over the years... if she was bad, I don't know, I could probably give Ami a run for her money. Because Shin's just brain. Little emotive content, very passive. Seemingly ery understanding, but just empty. Kari, on the extreme other hand, is emotion and emotive reasoning. She's the extreme, the opposite of Shin, acts without thinking just based on how she feels, which can lead to some good, occasionally - I think she saved your life, but she won't say why..."  
  
"Say? You... communicate?"  
  
Mitsuki nodded. "Mmmm-hmm. Not like you'd think, I expect. But... I can see them when they talk to me. And, likewise, when they're in charge, they can see me if I talk. It's... weird. My last psychiatrist said it was that I was visualising them in my head... that my mind is constructing an elaborate virtual reality to interact with my psyche in... and that none of it is real. But I think... you know, I'm a reincarnated soldier of the Moon Kingdom, right? And I think *that*... has done something to my brain. I first started having... problems... right after I found out I wasn't a normal person... I think the problems I was having at the time were exacerbated by becoming superhuman." She shrugged, changing the subject back. "Where was I? Oh yeah, Kari. She does good sometimes. But mostly, because she has little intellect to think things through with, or at least uses none because she acts on emotive impulse, mostly she's interested in self-gratification. The, erm, things I've done in public in times past... well, would worry me greatly if I hadn't moved about so much."  
  
"One of the others was saying something about you being a... killer?"  
  
"No, not a killer. Well, not quite. And understand, that was nothing I wanted to do. It just... happened."  
  
"What 'just happened'?"  
  
Mitsuki stood, prowled around her chair, anxious again, like she hadn't taken her medication. She made sporadic eye contact with Kaname, and it was rather obvious she was wanting to say something, but also at the same time, didn't want to. When she started making eye gestures to people who weren't in the room, Kaname guessed Mitsuki was having an internal conversation. Finally, she locked eyes with Kaname again, stopped her pacing and leaned down, almost agressively on the back of her chair. "I gave him a stroke, on top of other assorted injuries. He, um, became conscious a few months back for the first time in a while, actually, and he, um, still wets himself at the mention of my name."  
  
"How do you give someone a stroke?" Kaname asked, incredulously. Every day, she learnt something new in this dorm that she hadn't thought possible before. Magical girls, talking cats, mystic healers, perverted gremlins, and now a woman who could conjure up illnesses. Well, supposedly.  
  
"I don't know," Mitsuki admitted. "I think it was a reaction to my body, um, you know, not like 'woah, you're hot,' but more like my energy field. My ki, as you... Ranma'd say. My other personalities didn't give me much of a problem until that act. I... nearly killed him. Accidentaly. I just wanted to lose my virginity, you know? Have sex? And then I blew this poor boy up. He'd been the only boy who'd been interested in me in that town, and... and do you know what that feels like? And after that, I fell apart and the others had to... help me get by. Else I'd have killed myself too."  
  
Kaname was horrified by the explanation. "You... went free?"  
  
"I ran, actually. Well, Kari did. Taki came forward, thinking if I was incarcerated, I'd lose the will to live and let someone else in, but I wasn't charged. Instead, I was put into psychiatric care for a few months, on medication, and went through therapy and counselling, and then I left." Mitsuki moved back around her chair and sat down again, leaning forward to rest her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. She looked upset, troubled. "I almost believed the doctors, you know? When they told me it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't strong enough to break legs and arms and ribs and his pelvis and rupture major blood vessels in his head as well as fracturing his skull majorly without leaving a mark on him, you know? I just wanted to believe that. But... I know differently. Kari thinks it was me, too. She kind of enjoyed the act that much more because of it."  
  
"How'd it happen? I mean, was he something special?"  
  
"No... not really. I moved into the street for a while, went to school. He kind of drifted around the street, going from girl to girl, not staying with any, but with me... it was different. Like he'd fallen into a holding pattern. He'd come see me, head off to see another girl, but not do anything with them. And then he'd come back. And go again. And eventually, he spent more time around me than he did around other girls. Until one afternoon, when his parents were out, we fell into his bed together, and stayed there for a while. And then..." She looked wistful, staring backwards in time. Intense, as if by concentrating hard enough, Mitsuki could indeed travel back in time to that moment. "We started. And when we finished, when he finished, it was, it was horrible. Not at first, I just thought perhaps it was a lot better for him than it was for me. And he just trashed around a bit, moaning, jerking, almost like a puppet with its strings cut. I really did my best then to make it good for him. You know, faking it, grinding up against him, trying to scratch at his back... I first realised something was wrong when I watched his eyes... just flash bloodshot. That was when I panicked and pushed him off me. I'd thought I was transformed, but I wasn't. I was just... me. Like this, now. And I panicked. I really did. I called an ambulance, and I think that was what saved his life. That was six years ago, coming up on seven."  
  
Kaname did the mental maths. "You were fourteen?"  
  
"Yeah," Mitsuki confirmed. "Fourteen and on the run from my past already. And then on the run from my present when I nearly killed my boyfriend. When I was thinking right again, I decided I wasn't going to let that happen. But... I have a way of losing control when I can't afford to. And that means bad things when people are around."  
  
"You haven't touched a man in six years? Wow," Kaname said, trying to find something she could talk about. "I find it hard after, you know, nine weeks, but..." Mitsuki looked hurt. "I mean, you're not even *tempted* to try again? I have to say, that sounds like a one-off thing."  
  
Mitsuki shook her head at Kaname's comment, sounding defensive. "No, it doesn't, not when you know me. I want to try again, believe me, I *really* want to try again. I've touched men, but not in the ways I want to. The ways I think I need to. Or, rather, need to be touched."  
  
"Have you tried women?" Kaname suggested.  
  
"Have you?" Mitsuki shot back immediately. "How's that working out for you?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I saw Hotaru at dinner. She was all over you! She only found your legs *after* she'd found mine. I guess that's why she was a little abrupt with you. And, you know, Shuuji might be what I'd call a fence-sitter in that he's not taking part in the war for my head but just interested in seeing the outcome, but he's a talkative fellow and he was the one who decided to put into action what I'd have liked to... but didn't have the courage for."  
  
"You're fairly talkative yourself."  
  
"It's the medication. My brain slows down in forming thoughts and alters other thought patterns. That's why I'm usually in here watching television while my medication is working at its best. You don't know awesome programming until you watch some of this anime where the anime talks back to you."  
  
"Weird."  
  
"Yeah." Mitsuki looked away for a moment, and Kaname had the sensation of yet another invisible, but brief, conversation. "Oh, yeah, and be nice to her, okay? She's been through a lot."  
  
"So have I," Kaname reminded her. Mitsuki looked thoughtful at that, then got up and sat down next to Kaname, looking into her eyes all the time. After a moment of sitting still, Mitsuki's arms jumped up around her shoulders and pulled her into a tight embrace against Mitsuki's ample chest.  
  
"I forgot. I'm sorry." One hand freed itself and started stroking Kaname's hair idly. "We all have our problems, and perhaps I shouldn't be bothering you about Hotaru's. But she and you mean a lot to me, you know, and I'd hate to see her hurt."  
  
Muffled as her voice was by the enveloping presence of Mitsuki's breasts, Kaname managed, "I thought you two were rivals for Ranma?"  
  
"We are. But Saturn is also what grounds me, and keeps me within the Kingdom." She kissed the top of Kaname's head, released her, and headed down the hallway, deeper into the dorm buildings.  
  
Kaname's eyes followed her as she vanished. "Weird."  
  
******  
  
Hotaru was quiet, sitting on Kaname's futon. She was there when Kaname came in after watching another television programme, and she kept her eyes averted while Kaname changed, only minorly self-conscious about the fact she was almost completely undressed in front of the young woman who very obviously wanted to be watching. It wasn't so much that she'd be changing in front of someone that troubled Kaname, it was rather the fact that the person she was changing in front of was apparently lusting after her.  
  
Once she was in her pyjamas, she sighed, unable to pretend Hotaru was there for anything less than a friendly chat anymore, and she sat at the top end of her futon, without looking at her. "You do remember I said let me do -"  
  
"Yes, sempai," Hotaru said, quietly. "I wanted to apologise for my behaviour earlier."  
  
"How long have you been in here for?"  
  
"Not long."  
  
"How long?"  
  
"About an hour. Maybe a little longer."  
  
"Oh god, Hotaru, why didn't you come find me if you had something you wanted to get off your chest?"  
  
Hotaru looked around, the hints of a smile playing at the corners of her lips. But then it faded under the blush that came to her alabaster skin as something even worse apparently occurred to her, and she looked down, her fringe covering her cheeks. "I'm sorry, sempai. I have more to be sorry for, too."  
  
"What about? Shouldn't I be apologising?"  
  
"You?" Hotaru looked up, surprised.  
  
"Yeah, me," Kaname shot back. "I mean, I'm the one who messed up and told you to go away and got you upset in the first place, and -"  
  
"And you couldn't help yourself," Hotaru interrupted, shaking her head. "I know that. You're not Ranma, even if you have his body. But I think there's something there of him, that just wants a rest, time to deal with everything that's happened to him lately and around him." Hotaru paused. "I tried to kill him, you know," she added, softly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I was made evil, and I tried to kill him and other people."  
  
"Are you trying to scare me off? Because, it's working really well."  
  
"He stopped me. He - did something. He stopped and made me think. And it wasn't his fighting that stopped me. No; it was something deeper, something within him. Because -" She fell silent, remembering events in her head but forgetting that Kaname wasn't privvy to them.  
  
"Because?" Kaname prompted after a minute.  
  
Hotaru started, blinking at Kaname. "Because he didn't fight me back to normal. He fought me, but that was to keep me occupied. He didn't want to hurt me. He talked me back to being good. Like he realised that fighting wouldn't do anything except keep him alive long enough for him to reach me." She looked confused. "And you know, it's almost like someone had told him to do that, sometime, somewhere, because I think fighting was all he knew before moving here. And this... he wasn't fighting. He was... talking. Talking in ways that I thought were beyond him."  
  
"He wasn't much of a talker?"  
  
"More of a doer," Hotaru nodded in confirmation. "But he knew me in ways the man who twisted me never could. I... pushed Ranma away after that, because I felt I had to atone. But, in the end, that last moment before he saved us all, I realised that it wasn't needed, that he really did understand, and more importantly, that he accepted that I had... tried... to do that to him. That also surprised me. I mean, completely apart from him showing up from under that building as an evil General-monster thing, but still saving us... I don't know."  
  
"I don't either," Kaname echoed hollowly. "Everyone keeps talking about him, and I've met him - once. Twice, actually. No... maybe three times. But I don't know him. I probably never will. I'll just blink out of existance when... when he comes back."  
  
Hotaru lay a hand on Kaname's thigh, and queezed gently with a smile. "I don't think so. You might be what sprang up in his absence, but I think perhaps you're more like him than you realise."  
  
Kaname went to ask a question, but there was a knock on the door, and it slid open. Usagi peered inside quickly, scowling, as if she was checking to see if Kaname was ravaging her young friend, but seeing nothing was going on, she leaned back, hands going to her hips. "Phone for you, Kaname." She turned, and disappeared further down the hall. Kaname gave Hotaru an apologetic smile, and left the room.  
  
Makoto emerged from the kitchen, looking curiously at Kaname as she picked up the phone. "Hello?"  
  
"Uh... Kaname-chan?" the voice on the other end of the line said hesitantly. Kaname felt her knees go weak and her fingertips drain of blood. Shibaru. Unconsciously, she glanced down the hallway to see Hotaru emerging. She turned her back to the young woman before she could see Kaname was watching.  
  
"Shibaru. Um, hi. How'd you get this number?"  
  
A nervous laugh at the other end. "I wouldn't be much use in tech support for you girls if I wasn't some use at tracking down... rogue variables."  
  
"Rogue variables, riiiiight."  
  
An uncomfortable silence permeated the conversation, broken by a light touch on Kaname's elbow as Hotaru walked past, smiling slightly and nodding at the phone. She had that ancient look about her again. She mouthed, "Go for it," at Kaname before continuing on to take Makoto by the arm and led her into the kitchen again.  
  
"So, uh, Shibaru, what's up?"  
  
"Oh... you know... lonely nights, boring days without work..."  
  
"Computer system still not fixed?"  
  
There was a nervous sigh in Kaname's ear. "No. And they've got new experts in to look at it. There's all kinds of gibberish written through most of the mainframe's system files, every printer on the network server's spouting out some english song, 'Daisy Daisy', and our employee roster is..." Shibaru's voice cut off suddenly, and Kaname found her self grabbing the mouthpiece closer ot her lips.  
  
"Shibaru? Shibby?"  
  
"Um, yeah. Here. It's just... weird. And we're not supposed to talk about it."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Kaname could almost see Shibaru shrugging, probably in frustration. She could hear something in his voice that made it quaver ever so slightly. "Orders. You know how it is," he added, lamely. Then, he paused, took a deep breath, and asked, "Would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow night?"  
  
"Monday?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Kaname's mouth started to form the word 'no', and her breath started escaping from her lips even as she forced herself to stop and consider why. She'd made a pact with Hotaru, if not in so many words, that very afternoon that she didn't want to break, and yet, this was something that she had been wanting for the last two months. Shibaru. She could imagine the two of them already, having dinner at an expensive restaurant, the embarrassment of going home, the warm glow as he asked if she'd like to come back to his place instead of driving all the way out to Kanagawa from the city, the soft rasp of sheets on skin and the delicious, incredible heat that only two entwined people could produce in the middle of winter. She went to say no again, but remembered Hotaru. That old-before-time look, that understood, that accepted. The "Go for it," as she'd passed by.  
  
Damn, she'd known. Damn. Kaname went to say no again, not wanting to hurt Hotaru any more than she had, when she realised Hotaru was there beside her, taking the phone from her hand. "She says yes," Hotaru said to Shibaru. "She just can't talk right now. In shock." And she handed the phone back to Kaname with a smile. "Enjoy yourself," she mouthed before heading back into the kitchen.  
  
Dumbly, Kaname nodded.  
  
******  
  
"I thought the two of you had worked something out," Makoto accused Hotaru as soon as the door had closed behind her.  
  
Hotaru was wearing her Saturn-face again, the cold, clinical expression one who has seen too much often wears. Her eyes her deep and distant as she turned to face Makoto. "As much as I want her to say no, I don't want to," she said, simply.  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Why not indeed? Hotaru wasn't sure. She'd seen Kaname's reaction as she'd come out of her room, saw her finish her turn away, the furtive posture of her body. She'd heard the way Kaname was talking to who was obviously a man on the other end of the line, and she just knew.  
  
Knew that, if Kaname didn't do this, if she didn't take this chance, she may regret ever having said anything to Hotaru. She was nine weeks old, basically, and for most of that time, had obviously been interested in this guy she must have met at work. She considered herself heterosexual, and thus wasn't interested in women as such, especially as she seemed to be one. And when the man she'd been mooning over called her up and was working up to ask her out... Hotaru knew Kaname wouldn't say yes to him. She might have resented having said anything to Hotaru, and she coudln't really deal with much more resentment from her boyfriend... well, her boyfriend's body.  
  
Ultimately, she knew that Kaname wasn't Ranma, and that she didn't have any claim to Kaname. Eventually, Ranma would come back, and it would help if she tried to separate the two in her mind. If Kaname left her, broke her agreement, to be with this Shibaru, that would have to be okay with her. Ranma would come back one day, and he was hers, as much as she was his. If Kaname didn't, well, Hotaru hadn't lost anything, and may have made up some trust in her display and actions.  
  
But all she said was, with a shrug, avoiding eye contact with Makoto, "That's my decision." She took the back service exit into the rear hallway, and took the long way around the dorm to her room. Just before she could close the door, Kaname's foot intercepted it and blocked it from sliding shut.  
  
"Hotaru! Wait!"  
  
"Yes?" She found herself leaning on the door, body mostly behind it, with her head and a hand poking around the edge. Butterflies exploded in her stomach.  
  
"It's just dinner," Kaname said.  
  
"I know." Hotaru reached out and took Kaname's hand. "Enjoy yourself."  
  
Before Hotaru could pull her hand back, Kaname's other hand clamped down on it. She could be surprisingly strong when she was determined to say or do something, Hotaru realised. "I will be. But it will just be dinner between friends. I made a committment -"  
  
"You're not my boyfriend," Hotaru said quietly.  
  
"I know, but -"  
  
"It doesn't matter what I want," Hotaru continued. "I was being selfish. I'm young, and will get over that one day - now is as good a time as any. You pointed out that while you are here, you don't know how long, and then you may be gone for good. I think you won't be, but I don't know for sure. I think... you should go be happy. We will still be friends, like we are now."  
  
"If you're sure," Kaname replied uncertainly. She let Hotaru's hand go. "I don't want to hurt you. Again."  
  
Hotaru shook her head. "You won't," she continued in her quiet tone. "I'm much older than you'll ever be, Kaname, even if I don't look it. I have died before, I will again. I have outlived partners, and I know how ephemeral your lives are. How short, and thus how much more important that you enjoy what you can while you can. I won't stand in the way of your enjoyment." She slid the door shut, and leaned against it, breathing hard, but quiet, the corners of her eyes prickling and her lips hurting as she forced them together to stop from sobbing. Once she was sure Kaname wasn't going to try to open the door, she flung herself at her bed, buried her face deep in her pillows, and cried until she fell asleep.  
  
From the window, Luna watched over her.  
  
******  
  
That next evening was doubly uncomfortable for Kaname. It was her first time in what could almost be termed a formal date dress, a deep blue to play against her eyes, tight around the bust, but flowing outwards from her waist into a loose skirt that hung down to just below her knees. A pair of thick straps with ruffles running down to her breasts held the garment up over her shoulders and helped it sit straight across her otherwise-athletic frame. Under the dress, she wore a skintight grey sweater with long sleeves, as well as boots that rose up past her knees.  
  
Hopefully, she'd be warm.  
  
Christmas was fast approaching, and Usagi had gotten into the game of dressing up Kaname for her date that had started by giving her white gloves with huge fluffy cuffs and a woollen scarf taht could wrap around her neck enough to come up to just under her eyes to keep her warm. Usagi had then stepped back, and gave her critical opinion: "Hey, not bad. I've got to try that outfit next time I go out."  
  
Mitsuki, sitting silently by watching the crowd, abruptly stood up then and gestured at her watch. "If we don't go now, you won't get there on time."  
  
"Okay," Kaname said, checking herself once more in a mirror, worriedly picking at non-existant fluff before Mitsuki sighed, grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room.  
  
Outside, Mitsuki transformed into Sailor Nemesis, and wrapped her arms around Kaname's middle, and when she leapt off the ground, Kaname found herself sliding back with the force of the leap until her armpits caught on Nemesis' biceps. "Don't worry," Nemesis murmured, "I'm not going to drop you."  
  
"I wasn't worried about that," Kaname replied.  
  
"Liar."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're lying. To me. You think I'm going to get angry at you for getting Hotaru's hopes up, then dashing them like this." Kaname felt the senshi shrug above her. "But I'm not. She's a big girl, and I can't watch out for her if she keeps putting herself in stupid positions, you know."  
  
Kaname face grew warm with an embarrassed flush. "I didn't want to break my agreement."  
  
"I know. That's why I'm not angry." They whistled down, and Nemesis spun around so her feet took the impact on the concrete roof of the building they landed on, then they flexed, and the women were off into the air again. "She's trying to make you happy, you know. As well as make sure her boyfriend is close to her. And as well as seeing how much she can trust you, how much you like her."  
  
"I know," Kaname answered softly. "You think I don't? It's funny. I get over my preconceptions, break through any number of barriers I have about things, to make her happy - and she then tells me she doesn't want me like that. I know she does, I want -"  
  
"Yes?" Nemesis asked after a couple of minutes went by without Kaname completing her sentence.  
  
"I think I want her," Kaname completed, finally. "But I want... to make sure. This has been really quick for me. Two weeks ago, I was scared of her and didn't want to talk to her. Now, I'm kissing her and picturing doing more. Not that doing more is appealing to me right now, but two weeks ago, I couldn't conceive of me kissing her, either. I need to make sure that I'm not going to hurt her, that I'm not going to want to. Shibby-chan... he was the one man I wanted desperately to notice me. To... think of me like a woman, rather than a person with no memory. I mean, as far as he knew, I could have had a husband, children, diseases... I could be a murderer, or criminal."  
  
"That Agent Sato said you were a terrorist," Nemesis reminded her.  
  
"Gee, thanks for reminding me that the government - or what passes for one here - thinks I blew up half the city." Kaname snorted as they leapt from another building. "I need to know if the feelings I have for Hotaru-chan... will be negated next time I see or hear from a cute guy. A guy I could - well, you know."  
  
"Make slow, passionate love to all night long, or just have him quickly up against an alleyway wall?"  
  
Kaname chuckled nervously. "Well, yeah, I guess."  
  
"Good reasons. We can accept them, anyway." Nemesis was quiet for a minute, then: "We're coming up to where I'm dropping you off. You'll have a block to walk from here. I'll..." They landed, and Nemesis said no more.  
  
"You'll?" Kaname prompted after she dusted snow off her dress and boots and straightened up to look at the senshi again.  
  
"I'll..." She turned away. "Look, Kaname, I'll be in the area, you know? Just in case you need help. Or something. Or a ride home. Because... in this day and age... in this world, a girl can't be too careful. So if you need me, call for help."  
  
"You won't hear me," Kaname pointed out.  
  
Nemesis' outfit dropped away to reveal Mitsuki, wearing decent-enough clothes for a meal in a nice restaurant. "I, uh, made reservations this morning," she admitted. "Just in case."  
  
"So you could keep an eye on me," Kaname accused.  
  
"Yeah," Mitsuki admitted freely, "but I also don't think you should be out on your own. Not after what happened back at your apartment."  
  
An image of Sato beating Sailor Nemesis up in the street flashed up like a ghost in front of Kaname's eyes, and she shuddered involuntarily. "Point taken."  
  
"I'll follow you up in a few minutes," Mitsuki assured Kaname. "Don't worry, we'll be discreet. We've got a vested interest in being nice to you." She smiled, and gestured for Kaname to go ahead.  
  
******  
  
The restaurant was warm, and Kaname rubbed her hands together vigourously to try and rub some warmth into them under the material of the gloves. With the speed they had been travelling at outside, as well as the temperature, they hadn't done much to keep her warm.  
  
For that matter, neither had the rest of her clothing. She spoke to the doorman, who directed her to the maitre d', who in turn checked the entry log, then grabbed a passing waiter who guided her through the throng of people. Kaname barely registered anyone else in the restaurant, but did see a family of five checking a menu, three businessmen who were discussing folders spread out in front of them, a single woman, sitting at a table for two, gazing forlornly into the distance, a finger tracing an idle path around the lip of a crystal glass. There was a low hum from that table as Kaname passed that she realised was the audible aspect to the crystal's vibration.  
  
Without seeming to have expended any effort at all, the waiter reached a seemingly random table, and gestured to it. Kaname sat down, looking up into Shibaru's eyes. Once more, she was almost lost in them, and felt an almost-tangible pull towards him, like a star's gravity well yanking at a rogue planet. She willingly gave in, almost melted into the chair.  
  
He looked as gorgeous as ever. His hair was scruffy, but slicked back with a little water and a comb. His dress was neat, but not quite formal - more a casual style of clothing. But it was ironed, and that in itself was a little weird, seeing Shibaru in ironed clothes. His gaze... well, he dropped his nervous cow-like eyes to the table after the initial blast of power from his glance, and stared at the table. His shoulders were rigid, and Kaname realised with a start, he was actually more nervous than she was.  
  
Which made her feel better, grounded her. She couldn't let her hormones control her life, nor could she let vague wishes and notions of familyhood drive her actions. She crossed her hands in her lap, conscientiously, and glanced down, trying to let Shibaru take the lead. It didn't feel right to her, for some reason she felt she should be taking the lead, but not knowing the emotions she was feeling too well, she wanted someone to guide her, someone she could take her lead from.  
  
Eventually, he did take charge. "You look nice," he blurted.  
  
"Thank you," Kaname replied, blushing. "You do, too," she returned.  
  
Shibaru nodded, and glanced off to one side. "You know, I uh, I... couldn't find anything wrong with the computers," he continued. "The problems just fixed themselves. I think it might have just... been hacked by someone who put government data in there or something."  
  
"Shibby-chan?" Kaname asked as something occurred to her.  
  
"Yes?" His eyes shot back to Kaname, his frame still rigid with nerves.  
  
"Why did you ask me out?" She shook her head quickly. "Not that I'm complaining, but you... you kind of didn't really want much to go out with me, I thought, regardless of what I felt... for you..."  
  
"Uh..." She watched Shibaru think fast, his eyes rising and sliding to the right instinctively as he tried to think of something. That was Kaname's first realisation something was wrong with the scene. "It was, you know, I did feel things for you. I just wasn't comfortable with -"  
  
"Shibby, we'd have just been friends if it was left up to you. It was me interested in you. I mean, god, you wouldn't even have thought of me if I was living with -" Kaname cut her words short, and glanced down at the table, eyes wide with surprise. Dammit, how hadn't she realised? "How could you do this?" she asked in a low, tight voice. Anger, and fear, constricted her throat. Someone standing on the other side of the room told Kaname that Mitsuki had realised something was wrong with the date, even if she didn't know what it was. She was a little too forceful with her chair, and that tipped over as she fished wildly in her pocket for something.  
  
"How - how could I do what?" Shibby stood up, and stepped, almost jumped, back from the table. His eyes were growing larger now, with worry, fear - Kaname could see that through the tears that were threatening to stream free. Only her anger kept everything in check for the moment, and to keep momentum going with whatever was going to happen, to make sure she was ready, she stood also, pushed the table aside, and kept after Shibaru.  
  
"How could you trap me? How could you be party to lure me, an innocent woman, to this place to let them get me?"  
  
"If you were innocent, you wouldn't need to fear arrest," Shibaru gabbled, stumbling over an empty chair. His eyes darted over Kaname's shoulder, and a sudden chill and a staticky sound told her there were government agents behind her. She didn't quite understand how she knew there were three of them there, but Sailor Nemesis was making large strides towards Kaname and Shibaru and bringing her hands up for a Richter Wave attack on them. Then Shibaru screamed as his form twisted, blurred and stuttered with a very loud static noise pattern ripping through the air, before he settled down into the form of Agent Sato. Even before the change had settled, the crowd was up, screaming and running for the exits.  
  
There was silence around Sato and Kaname as the crowd automatically parted around them, and Nemesis entered the area devoid of people and skidded to a stop, seeing what Shibaru had become. "What... gave our hand... away?" Sato asked with a slight scowl.  
  
Kaname growled, pulling herself upright from her angry, hunched position and forcing herself to take a ready stance. "No one from work, or my old life, knows where I'm living now, and Shibaru managed to ring me at the dorm. Only someone with access to the system we're in could manage such a thing. So you guys had to be behind this somehow."  
  
"Poor, poor Mister... Tamashii thinks you're responsible for the deaths... of a million people. His heart is broken, you know. That special... feeling takes a woman's... touch." Sato shifted his expression to a smirk, and stepped forward purposefully towards Kaname. She waited until he was in range, then snap-punched, but he simply stepped to the side in a blur of motion, caught her arm and looked along it at her before flipping her bodily across two tables, where she slammed into the ground.  
  
Nemesis began moving again, but was grabbed by two other Agents, one for each arm. She twisted downwards, trying to break their grip, and when that failed, she spun over backwards, using her momentum to bring both legs up to knee the Agents in their faces. Their heads snapped back, but their grip didn't alter, and Nemesis felt her arms wrenched in their sockets for a shocked moment before she started screaming incoherently in pain.  
  
Kaname rose to her feet, unsteady, and focussed on Sato again. He strode through the restaurant towards her once more, but this time she waited for him to make an attack. The punch was firm, strong and straight when it came, and it caught Kaname's side as she twisted violently, bringing a foot up into Sato's gut. He folded in two but stood upright again without the slightest indication of injury, the movement only suggesting he'd been affected by the motion rather than its strength or power. He kicked this time, and Kaname danced backwards, her thigh's sudden flaring into agony telling her she didn't quite dodge the kick. When next she stood on it, pain lanced upwards and downwards, and she felt something shift - she'd splintered bone in there.  
  
"C'mon," she whispered to herself, "Now! Now!" Nothing happened. No man moving in the corner of her vision, no new strength flowing through her body, just her pain. In her peripheral vision, Kaname caught sight of another fist before it crashed into the side of her head like a freight train. She flew, and that was all she knew, her suddenly lightened mind marvelling at the sensation of being lighter than air. Then she wondered why the lights had gone -  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
A friend started me on the path to releasing this first part of the chapter today (thanks, Rugle, thanks also Misha ^^) and so here it is... first of a new duology/trilogy leading up to the last chapter of Love. The chapter keeps getting longer, and longer, so I'm not really sure exactly HOW long it will go... but this is definitely the first part. Still, it's big. And the next chapter should be around the same size, maybe just a touch bigger (perhaps, unless I split that into two parts).   
  
I think this chapter hangs together pretty well; and that is the feedback I've received thus far as well, so hopefully it's not just in my imagination.  
  
Of course, the next part is now the rescue of Kaname... and maybe some other stuff. Well, definitely other stuff, ubt that can be a surprise. 


	16. Love 16

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
WARNING: This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, shameless rip-offs, limeish content and at least one sex scene. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned.  
  
LOVE  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
Chapter 16  
  
** Paradise Regained **  
  
The door to the dorm opened, and Hotaru popped up from the couch, spinning around to face the doorway. "Sempai?" she asked, loudly. No, she quickly saw, it wasn't. Just Nemesis. Bleeding on the carpet before she toppled face-first onto the floor.  
  
"Usagi! Makoto! Ami!" she yelled, diving for the elder senshi as she changed back from her powered form thanks to her unconscious state. Hotaru wrapped an arm under Mitsuki's head, before laying a hand on her chest. She felt bones shift under her palm, and shivered. The other women were arriving now, as Hotaru grabbed deep inside Mitsuki and forced the older woman to accept her, pushing her life force and health through her, driving out the injury. A few moments, and Hotaru collapsed next to Mitsuki, gasping, pale, heart pounding.  
  
"What's wrong with her?" Usagi asked anxiously, while Rei headed out the door to have a quick look to see if anyone was prowling around outside.  
  
"She's been beaten," Hotaru gasped, trying to regain control of her breathing and heart rate. Neither were coming under control. "She's safe now, but... it was a little much," she added.  
  
"Who? Who did this to her?" Usagi demanded. Hotaru didn't know; she shook her head. Ami was already running a scan cycle from her computer, and shook her head.  
  
"Her information has been severely damaged, but she's slowly rebuilding, thanks to Hotaru," she said quietly. "There seems to be a specific method to the damage, though, as if someone was limiting themselves to not kill her. As if they wanted her to make it back here to where she could be helped under her own steam."  
  
"That sounds so mechanical," Usagi blanched.  
  
"That's because it is," Ami replied, closing her computer and putting it away, her transformation wand appearing in its place. "But perhaps we should be ready?"  
  
Mitsuki's eyelids fluttered, and a hand clutched at Hotaru's skirt. She whispered something the pale girl heard, but that no one else did, before her grip weakened again and she was once more taken unconscious. Rei entered from the front door, shaking her head and brushing fresh snow from her shoulders.  
  
"There's no one out there," she said, before she fell silent, waved quiet by Usagi.  
  
"Hotaru?"  
  
The younger senshi raised her head. "Kaname," she said. "They got Kaname."  
  
Usagi was taken aback a little. "I thought she could beat those guys. What happened?"  
  
"She didn't say," Hotaru shook her head slowly, as if moving at the moment caused her pain. "Just that she's... been taken. By those agents. That they faced before."  
  
"I thought... you know... Ranma came to save her."  
  
"Perhaps he can't," Makoto suggested quietly. "You know, we all saw him before. A ghost. Like that spat of sightings in town. What if that's all Ranma is now? Junk... data... floating around in this system?" Something dawned in Makoto's mind. "Maybe that's what ALL the ghosts are... the data that make people up, the memories, personalities, things that got misplaced during this big transfer... with all the data Ami was talking about, surely something got messed up..."  
  
"Even a tiny percentage of the data, in the order of 0.0000001% of the total data transferred, would create mass chaos if corrupted or lost," Ami agreed. "Although I would expect that without those specific iems of data, the re-creation wave would have created mindless husks rather than people capable of functioning -" She cut herself off suddenly as realised dawned. "If guided right, the system operator in charge of the transfer could have shaved off a number of elements of data and still made a functioning human. That would mean these people... possibly these Amnesiacs... have had this done to them deliberately. But why?"  
  
Usagi shrugged. "If that's what you're talking about, it being done deliberately, and these agents were looking for Ranma, then that's obvious: whoever set the transfer up did it deliberately to hide Ranma from the agents. From Yoshihiro. Whoever set this up isn't working for him, but against him."  
  
Rei stared at Usagi. "That's pretty deep," she admitted. "Even for you."  
  
"That's just really scary," Makoto agreed. "But why not round us up when we were all at the tower site? Every single one of us was drained. We were all injured, weakened, shocked into immobility."  
  
"Perhaps the agents weren't online yet," Ami suggested. "Or perhaps there were other concerns. Running a system this large would create a multitude of organisational problems. Mostly, they'd have relied on the existing Tokyo emergency services to run rescue operations into the Zone -"  
  
"But why," posed Usagi, "did they destroy the tower? If they could rebuild everything... why not rebuild that? Why have a million people dead?"  
  
"The dead people," Hotaru said in a quiet, shaky voice, "were dead before the monster blew us all up. There was nothing to rebuild but corpses. Even if we save Tokyo, even if we rebuild it, they will still be dead."  
  
"How do you know?" Minako quiered.  
  
"I'm the senshi of death, remember?" offered Hotaru with a weak smile. She pulled herself together, sitting up beside Mitsuki, running a hand lightly across the older woman's stomach to check on her. "I felt them all die, and I haven't felt any of them come back yet."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Should we move Mitsuki somewhere more comfortable?" Usagi queried.  
  
"No, you shouldn't," Mitsuki grumbled, her eyes still shut. Her voice was weak, but gaining strength. "We've got to go after them. While the trail's still hot. We can't leave Kaname with them." She tried sitting up, but needed help from Makoto to get fully upright. "I left her. I couldn't do anything, and they took her. I said I'd protect her, and I didn't. I've got to -" She tried standing, but Makoto held her down with one hand.  
  
"You've got to rest. Sleep, preferably. And get something to eat," she added, thoughtfully eyeing the kitchen door, already wondering what she had in there that could be used for that purpose.  
  
"Late night snack?" Usagi asked hopefully.  
  
Ami fixed her with a glare. "Formulating a battle plan," she said reproachfully. "The trail is probably already cold; we have to think of a way to draw these agents out to find where Kaname is, as well as a way of fighting them."  
  
"Ok, let's do that too," Usagi sighed, helping Mitsuki up with Makoto on the other side of the woman. "But I think they'll want us to find Kaname. So we shouldn't think too much on how we have to find her."  
  
******  
  
Which did seem to be the general consensus at the informal meeting, and so the senshi retired for the night... again. No one seemed to sleep very well, least of all Hotaru, who ended up wrapped in a blanket on top of the main dorm wing in Ranma's standard perch. From there, obscured by occasional drifts of snow, she could see far into the distance. The lights of Yokohama and Kawasaki glittered, like faint jewels, stars almost, and she felt loneliness. She had had him back, and she had let him go - had given him to the enemy.  
  
She shuddered at that thought more than the cold. She knew Yoshihiro intimately, knew how he could twist one's mind. Ranma had already proven resistant to those charms he wove, the glamour he seemed to possess, but Kaname had no such defences. She was female through and through, and would swoon willingly into his arms, especially without someone there in memory to hold onto, to clutch at for help to keep some part of her mind clear. That was how Hotaru had managed to survive instead of being devoured by the beast Yoshihiro's subtle magicks had woken.  
  
Something warm pressed into her leg, and she looked down. A hand. A masculine hand. Callused fingers. She recognised the hands, and stifled back a sob. She wanted to touch it, clutch it to her and hold it tight, but she knew it was only memory, that she was only seeing what she was wanting to see. Like all the other times. Fantasy. Imagination. That was all that was left to her now, especially now. She knew Usagi was right, that these Agents wouldn't leave a trail because they didn't need to, didn't have to, that they would WANT the senshi to come looking for them to get Kaname back, and so whatever trail they left would still be there in the morning.  
  
The hand, in Hotaru's memory, stayed there. The other wrapped around her shoulder, pulled her in close and tight, and she felt a strong jaw on her other shoulder. Memories. She could almost smell Ranma...  
  
"Hotaru?" Luna asked, waking Hotaru from the doze she'd fallen into. "You should be in bed, getting some sleep. You don't know if you'll be getting much rest, after this," the cat added in a warning tone.  
  
"I'm all right, Luna," Hotaru replied, brushing snow off her blanket and inviting the warm cat inside to sit on her lap. "I'm just thinking."  
  
"About?"  
  
"Ranma. And Kaname. And Yoshihiro."  
  
"And?"  
  
Hotaru let out a frustrated breath with its associated cloud of vapour in the cool air. "Luna... I'm finding it very hard to wait. I can go find Kaname, right now, and get her. I *know* I can."  
  
"Can you fight these Agents that Mitsuki has talked about?"  
  
"I can blow up worlds, I think I can handle a few supermen."  
  
"But this is a computer system. So what if they can alter things so they're stronger than you? What if you try to kill them with your Silence Glaive, and they instead kill you?"  
  
"Then I'll have *tried*! But this sitting here, doing nothing... Luna, it doesn't feel right to me."  
  
"Why doesn't it?"  
  
Again, Hotaru puffed. "Ranma would already have come after me. I know he would have. I can't sit here, sit here and do nothing, while he's in danager. Even if it's not him."  
  
Luna snuggled into Hotaru's lap, and she found herself stroking the black feline slowly. "You're not sitting here doing 'nothing'," Luna chidded. "You're supposed to be getting rest so you *can* do something to help him."  
  
"Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do," said a voice from behind them both. Hotaru whirled, losing her balance and managing to catch herself with an elbow before she toppled off the building.  
  
"Yoshihiro!" Hotaru snarled as Luna shot out from under the blanket and slid down the roof by accident, as Hotaru struggled to her feet on the slippery rooftop, pulling out her transformation wand.  
  
"You won't need that," Yoshihiro smiled. "You're not strong enough to fight me successfully, and regardless, I'm not actually here." As if on cue, a drift of snow blew through him, and his form pixelated ever so slightly.  
  
"Why are you here, then, if not to fight?"  
  
"I don't know," Yoshihiro said, as he turned and paced a few steps, the roof dropping away an a dramatic angle beneath him while he remained on some invisible horizontal floor above the tiles. He glanced back. "To gloat, perhaps?" he smirked.  
  
"Gloating isn't your style," Hotaru shot back, flicking her wand over and over in her fingers, unsure of when - or indeed, how - to act. "You like standing back in the shadows. Acting on your own regard with no thought to others. No conscience."  
  
"Ah yes, that's right," Yoshihiro said, snapping his fingers in faint surprise. "You weren't there at the school, were you? Oh, I do enjoy a little gloating from time to time. It's one of the perks of being evil. You were unconscious, though; rather, Mistress Saturn was. You were only a memory."  
  
Hotaru's eyes burned with cold fire.  
  
"And memories... well, memories aren't what we think them to be, are they?" Now his gaze turned from Hotaru to some place distant, in space as well as time. "We have memories that drive us, make us what we are, make us go on to bigger, better things..." His voice grew as distant as his gaze, and he fell silent for the moment.  
  
"Memories also keep us warm, waiting for the time when we don't need to rely on memories again. They can remind us of how far we've come, of our dearly loved friends and family, and they guide our hearts and souls," Hotaru forced herself to calm down. So long as she couldn't fight him, he supposedly couldn't fight her, and could only at worst rant at her. Talk Hotaru to death. And while he wanted to talk, perhaps he might let slip something...  
  
Yoshihiro's attention returned. "Truer words were never spoken," he said with a smouldering smile. "For, one's entire moral centre is guided by your memory of your parents. Your path in life, your goals, are from childhood imaginings. Your relationships are formed by memories of your parents. A man will fall in love with a woman who smells like his mother; a woman will fall in love with a man as strong as her father. All little things... some of the biggest things in human existance... but all little... all small... and all dictated by what you learn as a child. Truth. Love. Justice. Morality. Honour. Committment. All things learned as a baby, from that first moment you begin to suckle at your mother's breast to the moment you become an adult, that dictate how you live your life." He paused, and looked distant again. "How I envy people who have their choices made for them."  
  
"I don't understand..."  
  
Yoshihiro offered a short hollow chuckle in reply. "Of course you don't. It is surprising how blind people become towards friends."  
  
"We're not friends," Hotaru felt herself growing hot with anger again and forced it down beneath an icy moon.  
  
"Oh?" Yoshihiro seemed surprised. "But I understand you. I know you. I know everything about you, things you haven't told anyone - not Usagi, not your adopted parents, not even our Mister Saotome. Should that not mean I am your friend?"  
  
"No it does not," Hotaru replied with disgust leaching through now, the memory of Yoshihiro's invasions brought to the front of her mind, searing images of the mental rape refusing to vanish from her eyes. She spun her transformation wand, felt power flood through her body (and a chill on her legs), and she spun her Glaive around into a ready position. "It makes you an evil, despicable person capable of the most horrifying violations of body and soul possible. It does not make you my friend. My friends care about me. My friends care for me. And in turn, because of their kindness, I care for and about them. We are honest with each other, we love each other unconditionally, and we refuse to judge our friends, because that's all we have. Because there are people like you, who would try to hurt us."  
  
"I see."  
  
"Where is Kaname?"  
  
Yoshihiro looked down. "I... appear to have made a wasted trip."  
  
"Where is Kaname?!?"  
  
"I may have miscalculated."  
  
"WHERE'S RANMA???" Saturn screamed. Yoshihiro's body vanished in a dazzle of swirling pixels, and Saturn found herself alone again on the rooftop. She slumped to her knees, then slid backwards until her rump was seated on the rooftop as well; she didn't care about the cold, wet feeling from the snow and ice. She tried to cry, but nothing wanted to come out of her apart from a few dry wracking sobs. Again, she was Hotaru, cold, empty, alone on the roof.  
  
And then, her eyes opened wide and her chin came up. And she looked to one side, before scrabbling down to the guttering. "Oh, shit, LUNA!"  
  
******  
  
Luckily, Luna was fine, merely wedged into the guttering at the edge of the roof and unable to clamber out without help, and she spent the rest of the night sleeping under the covers in Hotaru's room.  
  
The next morning saw an anxious Artemis prowling the bedrooms looking for Luna, although once he found her, he tried to affect an air of indifference. Luna nuzzled him as she sauntered past for the kitchen, and that was it. Hotaru was already showered, groomed and dressed when Luna left, and she joined them and the other senshi in the kitchen a few minutes later.  
  
Usagi looked bored as she waited for Makoto to finish preparing breakfast, but had a determined air about her for the day's events. Ami concentrated on her studies, lapsing further and further as the days wore on and school didn't return. Rei ran through some hand-written wards and meditation techniques, while Mitsuki absently combed her hair where she was leaning up against one of the cupboards as she swallowed her morning medication. Minako was the last to arrive, rushing in with a terminal overdose of moisturiser across her hands.  
  
"ICK! It's gooey!" she yelled before running her hands under one of the sink's taps.  
  
"HEY!" yelled Makoto as Minako's vigourous hand-washing spilled moisturisered water all over a collander of rice. A few seconds after pushing Minako out of the way, Makoto gave up, glared at the woman still trying to get her hands under the tap, then binned the rice. "That's disgusting. And that's what bathroom sinks are for, not the kitchen sinks. Got it?"  
  
Minako stopped, for a moment not moving or blinking, then bobbed her head. "Got it." She vanished from the kitchen.  
  
"Someone's in a chippy mood," Usagi noted as the door swung shut. "Anyone'd think she had a.... a..."  
  
"Date?" Ami guessed, looking up from her book. "She woudln't have set one up for today. She knows what we're doing."  
  
Usagi sank back into her chair, looking thoughtful. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just think, you know, they're going to want us to find him. Her. Hir? Her. You know who I mean. Kaname." Hotaru gave her a quirked eyebrow in response, and Usagi poked out a tongue, but her heart just wasn't in it. "They're going to want us to find her at a time and place of their choosing, and we're just gonna have to wait."  
  
"What makes you think that, Usagi?" Ami asked, closing her book and placing it on the table before her. "I mean, I agree with you, mostly, but why do you think that will be the situation?"  
  
Usagi shrugged. "I just believe that, here." She patted her chest. "I feel it. But if we're in a computer, and they control the computer... then they can hide without us finding them. Ever. Unless they want us to. Because they can control the computer. They can control what we see, what we hear, smell, touch... everything."  
  
"But the computer must be set up for a reason," Makoto said from the sink. "Ami, you said you thought Yoshihiro wanted to use us as a power source." At the name, Hotaru stiffened in her chair a little. Usagi noticed, no one else did. "Any ideas for what?"  
  
Ami shook her head, but had a theory nonetheless. "Beryl utilised human life force to try to resurrect Queen Metallia; is it possible she could have survived the destruction of Beryl and her palace, and be seeking corporeal existance once more?"  
  
Usagi shook her head now. "No. No, I felt her die. Both of them." She nodded briskly. "Oh, they're very dead."  
  
"That's not the same as saying -"  
  
"They're. Very. Dead."  
  
"Okay," Ami waved the idea away. "It was just an hypothesis."  
  
"Do we have any other ideas?" Usagi asked, looking around pointedly at Hotaru. But the younger senshi said nothing as yet, and Usagi gave her a flat glare. "For now, then, I guess we all go about our lives normally. They'll let us know when they're ready to let us know."  
  
"That doesn't sound like you, Usagi," Mitsuki said from her position against the cupboard. "You're always rushing in to things, and right now, you're being sensible. Who the hell ARE you?"  
  
Usagi's ponytails whirled around her head as she snapped her glance around to fix on Mitsuki. "The leader of this group. And trying not to get us all killed while trying to rescue someone."  
  
"If it was one of us -"  
  
"If it was one of us," Usagi very pointedly was referring to the people in the room except for Mitsuki, "I would give my life for them while trying. But Ranma's not exactly one of us, and there's still that whole 'he's an evil Dark General' thing he's got to explain."  
  
Mitsuki sighed, her eyes distant. "But Hotaru knows just how attractive the bad boys are..." Said senshi's eyes narrowed dramatically, but Mitsuki continued on seemingly oblivious. "And not all bad boys bite that hard. I mean, look at Keitaro. Ami still drools over him when she thinks of him. Or Mamoru; you're so wrapped up in him we're STILL hearing about you putting date money into buying back our identities. I should have gone last night. Soon as Hotaru had patched me up, I should have gone out after her again."  
  
"No, you shouldn't have," Usagi replied.  
  
"You were still injured," Ami added.  
  
"Her heart's in the right place," Hotaru said evenly, "even if her brain's not." She slid from her chair, and left the room. Silence reigned.  
  
Then, Mitsuki sighed, pushed herself fully upright and glared at Usagi. "Now you got her crying. Great going, fearless leader." She patted Usagi absently on the shoulder as she passed by, as if by way of apology, and continued on out the door, apparently following Hotaru.  
  
"Yikes, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Usagi commented, following Mitsuki's departure with her eyes.  
  
"She'd have smacked bang into the wall if she had," Makoto added distantly, back to glaring at Minako, who was now drying off her hands with paper toweling and examining them critically.  
  
"I got out of bed on the other side this morning," Minako said, apparently happy with the condition of her hands and deigning to join the conversation once more. "Too many plushies on that side when I woke up. Like someone was trying to smother me during the night with them. Or something." She looked curious. Rei looked annoyed.  
  
"You might not wake up tomorrow morning yet," Makoto promised.  
  
******  
  
Mitsuki caught Hotaru's hand on the stairs to the roof, and held the younger girl solidly. "Hey," she said.  
  
"Let go of me," Hotaru enunciated. "You've no right to hold me; especially not after what you just said."  
  
"What I just...?"  
  
Hotaru jerked her hand from Mitsuki's and headed up the stairs once more. But again, a hand prevented her from stepping onto the roof. This time, it pulled her back down to Mitsuki, turning her around to face the older woman. She was peering into Hotaru's face, on a level with it as she was a few steps further down, and she seemed concerned. "I worry about you, Hotaru. I consider you a friend, you know that."  
  
Hotaru have an empty chuckle, and turned her eyes to the side. "You're the second person to make that claim today who's recently made my life hell." She cut off Mitsuki's next question by trying to pull back again. "Will you let me go?"  
  
"No. No, not yet. You know I'm right, don't you?"  
  
"About what?"  
  
"About..." The vehemence spat at her threw Mitsuki for a moment. "For finding your stinking boyfriend, that's what. He needs tracking down and bringing back." Again, Hotaru pulled away, and Mitsuki dug her fingers in. One of the most powerful senshi Saturn might be, but Hotaru Tomoe was as opposite of that as one could be; there was no contest.  
  
"You're... hurting me!" she whined, then clapped her free hand over her mouth, her eyes opening wide as if embarrassed and ashamed of the public admission. Mitsuki, too, started and let Hotaru go free, and the young girl bolted up the stairs, fleeing as fast as she could. By the time Mitsuki recovered, and arrived at the rooftop, Saturn was bouncing off towards Yokohama.  
  
Moments later, Nemesis joined her, seriousness in her expression, control once more in her stance. She matched her stride to Saturn's, yet Saturn wouldn't meet her gaze. The Glaive held loosely in Saturn's left hand kept enough distance between the two that Nemesis couldn't easily intrude onto the other's attention.  
  
For fifteen minutes, they travelled as such. And then, Saturn stopped, landing in a concrete field between a pair of warehouses. Alone, obviously with no one around perhaps for up to a kilometre, Nemesis and Saturn stared at each other with a scant few metres between them.  
  
"What is your problem?" Saturn asked. "You've been baiting me all morning. Prodding. Poking. Only a few words; a few brief lines, but every action seems calculated to set me off."  
  
"I'm not trying -"  
  
"And you DON'T want to set me off." Saturn impacted the haft of the Silence Glaive into the cement, small chunks flying, dust exploding upwards to coat her nearest boot. The Stare Of Ages followed. "You might think you're hot stuff, but I assure you, I play nice with everyone so you can all look good."  
  
"I have no doubt of that," Nemesis replied, dubiously. "But I don't know where this is coming from."  
  
"You say the things you say -"  
  
"I haven't said anything!"  
  
"- and expect me to just stay CALM? You insult me, you remind me of things I've tried to atone for, that I've been forgiven for, you insult my BOYFRIEND, and you -"  
  
"Ranma?"  
  
"- just think I'll let that slip?"  
  
"Calm down, Sailor Saturn! I don't -"  
  
"I *AM* calm!"  
  
"Calm down more, then! I don't know what -"  
  
Saturn fell silent. Then, after a few moments' reflection, "I saw you take your pills this morning."  
  
Nemesis paused now, searching inside herself. An internal roll-call suggested something bad. "Oh..."  
  
"Oh? You act like a complete bitch, and all you can say is 'oh'?"  
  
"Oh dear?" Nemesis tried to defuse the situation, but it did little more than enrage the diminutive senshi. She grabbed her Glaive, spun it upwards and around, spinning the blade around so only the pole of the weapon smacked into Nemesis' head, before she jerked away in belated motion, already spinning down into a blocking position until such time as the ringing in her heads cleared up.  
  
Saturn wasn't going to give her time to gather her wits, though, spinning the Glaive around her head again and sliding it down towards Nemesis' other cheek. The elder senshi brought a forearm up to block it, and it smashed into her arm, deeply bruising the superdense flesh under the site of impact. Nemesis gasped, and pulled her arm in against her body until it healed enough to move it without the pain that was shooting through it even now. The Glaive swung around in another abbreviated arc, but this time Nemesis managed to step to one side, the pole slashing down where she had just been. Effortlessly, Saturn shifted the weapon's motion to head sideways in her direction at knee-height, and Nemesis jumped over both it and Saturn, breaking into a run while trying to clear some space between the two of them.  
  
"Have you gone insane? I was -"  
  
But Nemesis had no time to talk, as Saturn slashed the Glaive past her again, smashing a furrow in the concrete ground. A quick shake of her arm showed the bruise was healing, as was the one on her jaw, but not as fast as Saturn could heal herself. And Nemesis had no wish to hurt Saturn - she was trying to stop the fight.  
  
That was why, a moment later, she dropped onto her hands, and as Saturn tried to stop running towards her, she wrapped her thighs around Saturn's neck, picked her up, and slammed her into the ground, worming her way down her body to keep her thighs wrapped around Saturn's arms, trapping the Glaive into a position where Saturn couldn't use it to much effectiveness. "Will you STOP right now? And let me explain?"  
  
"GET OFF ME AND FIGHT!"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Then hurry up and talk!"  
  
"I don't think my pills are working!"  
  
"That's bloody obvious... and you usually still manage to show more emotional and verbal restraint, so what's -"  
  
"I'm worried sick about... Kaname, okay? As much as you are. And I think that might be why my medication isn't working quite so well." Nemesis relaxed her thighs a little, and slid off, standing, offering Saturn her hand. It was refused, and Saturn did not look happy when she stood. "Hey, I'm not wanting to fight. I came out to ask if you wanted to go looking for... Kaname."  
  
Saturn turned away. "Usagi said -"  
  
"Usagi's a spoilt brat who cries if she's not getting her own way," Nemesis spat. "Frankly, she should have stayed dead."  
  
Silence. Enough to hear jackhammers in the extreme distance.  
  
"You didn't really mean that, did you?" An even tone of voice.  
  
"Mean what?"  
  
"What you just said about Usagi."  
  
Nemesis was confused. "What did I say about Usagi?"  
  
Saturn turned to face her, eyes searching for something. "You don't remember saying anything about Usagi?"  
  
Nemesis shook her head. "No. Did I...?"  
  
"And you don't remember saying anything about me in the kitchen?" Saturn continued. "Or Ami?" she added, at the headshake. "Or Usagi?" Another shake of the head. Saturn looked away. "I agreed with your sentiments. But you hurt me. A lot, Sailor Nemesis. And not just with words. You hurt me. Physically. On the stairs, back at the dorm." Nemesis reached out a hand, as if to touch Saturn's shoulder, tell her she was sorry, but she hesitated. Apparently, too much had been said for the moment for Saturn to believe her, so she retracted her hand, and looked at the ground like a contrite child. Saturn blew out a breath, and turned back. "We compete for Ranma's attention, on and off, I know that you look at him like I do. I've seen you. I've also seen you try to live through me as often as you try to help me with him. And I know your personalities... kind of. Not by name, but enough these days to spot when you, Mitsuki or Nemesis, isn't at the reins. And what you've said... there's been no length of time there, Sailor Nemesis. Usually, you have at least a few minutes with a personality before you change again, but not today. It's like, snap snap snap." She snapped her finger and thumb together in demonstration. Nemesis nodded, still looking at the ground. "And you don't even seem to be aware of it. That's just..."  
  
"Scary?" Nemesis asked, looking up. "I don't think that's scary, or worrying. Me saying things... few listen anyway. And when they do, everyone puts it down to 'oh, she's not taking her medication." Nemesis snorted. "I *did* take my medication this morning, though, and last night, and yesterday morning, and before that... I've been good, dammit, and so has everyone else. And suddenly, it stops working. What do you think that means? I don't care what I say; actions are far more worse than words ever can be."  
  
"If you say the wrong thing, you'll be ostrasized for life from your friends," Saturn reminded her quietly.  
  
"I've got no friends anyway," Nemesis returned, her shoulders slumping a little in recognisation of that fact. "And if I did have friends, they'd know about and accept my problems as something I mostly don't have a lot of control over, no matter how much I try, no matter how much it means to me. And you know what? If people can't put up with me having other people in my head, fine. If they can't put up with me saying weird stuff sometimes, then fine. But what scares me? What really worries me? I might hurt someone. I've said before, and demonstrated before, I have violent personalities. Mostly, they just get verbally aggressive, but sometimes, sometimes they want to get physical."  
  
"That Chinese ex-fiance of Ranma's," Saturn remembered.  
  
"Yeah, her. Shampoo. I make it a point to remember the names of people I hurt through no fault of my own. No. No," Nemesis corrected, shaking her head. "Not through no fault of my own, but in spite of myself. I might not be in control of myself, but they're all part of me. For that, I have to take responsibility." She turned away. "I still think we should go after Ranma, though."  
  
"So do I," Saturn said, after a few moments thought. "And I'll join you. But, Sailor Nemesis, please. So I'm not tempted to slip... watch your mouth." Nemesis nodded, still not looking back, then crouched, and leapt again. Saturn followed her within a heartbeat.  
  
******  
  
"Agent Sato."  
  
His master's voice. Sato turned from the typewriter he was tapping at, to the telephone. It hadn't rung. It didn't need to, but the illusion was nice to maintain. He picked it up, feeling the chunky black plastic handset heavy in his hand. "Yes?"  
  
"I've heard you've been busy," came the reply. Sato hadn't told Yoshihiro about the previous night's mission, but he guessed the Master had some kind of system report at his fingertips. "You captured this Miss Mizuno. Ranma Saotome. But I fear she may not be who we are looking for."  
  
"I beg... to differ. This young woman has, on occasion... shown she is capable of... magical things."  
  
"No doubt." Yoshihiro sounded a little down, tired almost. "Yet she is missing the data that makes her Ranma Saotome. The most dangerous foe we have, currently."  
  
"What about -"  
  
"The senshi can be contained. Give them a cause and they'll throw themselves into it." A sigh breathed down the line, almost unbidden. "Anything would do. Death camps. Stolen generation of kittens. Stolen generation of children. Resurrection of Beryl, or Raijin, or any of the others. Something that would threaten world peace and friendships. Especially friendships. They have special... urges... that require them to sacrifice all they have for a... select group of unworthy people."  
  
"Master..." Sato reminded Yoshihiro. "I could simply... exterminate them. Delete them... from the system."  
  
"No. No, they may yet come ar... to be useful."  
  
"Then... what do you want done... with Miss Mizuno? Do you want her... terminated?"  
  
Strength flowed into Yoshihiro's voice now. "No. No, I think not. For the moment, the rogue data that comprises Saotome is linked to this young woman. If we kill her... he may latch on to another. For the moment, we know where he will be."  
  
"Understood." As Sato spoke, the phone clicked dead. Yoshihiro was gone. The agent frowned as he replaced the handset on its cradle; the Master sounded... upset. As if something had happened. But what? He turned around in his chair to face behind him, and stared at the woman tied and gagged in a chair against the wall. She glared at him murderously, and he stared evenly back at her. Finally, he sighed, and turned back to his typewriter.  
  
"Now... I just need to know... what to do with you." He thought a moment, then smiled. "Ah, yes." Sato began typing on his typewriter rapidly, fingers blurring in motion like Kaname had seen the night before, in the restaurant.  
  
And then there was a knock at the door.  
  
******  
  
Yoshihiro leaned back in the command chair, staring at the terminal in front of him, hands steepled in front of his face. There he sat for a time, alien thoughts running through his head. Memories not his swimming through his brain, plans of a long-dead regent drifting in and out of sync with his own. Eventually, at the back of the bridge, Umiko stirred from where she had been waiting next to Natsumi, and shifted to his side. His eyes glanced up, seeking hers. She stared back evenly.  
  
"Your trip last night unsettled you," she said, simply.  
  
Yoshihiro nodded, and looked down again, still troubled.  
  
She ran a hand down from the crown of his head to his chin via his jaw, and directed his gaze back up to her. "You have work," she continued. "It cannot wait. The planning committee wants reports on our progress."  
  
"Yes," Yoshihiro conceded. Seconds passed, then he slapped his professional face down, and pushed himself up out of the chair. "Come. Let us depart."  
  
A dimensional side-step placed them on the southern outskirts of Yokohama. From there, they could look northwards into the devastated zone that was once a bustling metropolis. Umiko always took heart from that sight, the majesty of debris that was once a commercial hub for a great deal of the hemisphere, a looted reminder of the millions of people who vanished in an instant of vapourisation. No shadows in this Japanese city; merely in the minds of those left behind.  
  
Millions dead. What an achievement.  
  
She turned to face Yoshihiro, saw him also staring out over the ruined city. But his face was inscrutiable. For a change, to Umiko. He tended to be so open to her; and why not? She was his guardian, his protector. His First-Turned. His sense suggested that he was proud of his accomplishments, that he was satisfied on some level, but on a deeper level - he was missing something. Umiko took note of that, nodding to herself and making mental plans as she preened herself, smoothing hair back into place, tucking her ears under a headband and retracting her claws. A quick check of her clothes showed that her black jacket and skirt were uncreased and otherwise undamaged. Yoshihiro, as usual, didn't bother to check his clothing; he never needed to. If something were wrong with it, he knew instantly. Almost as if it were part of himself, his material armour in a physical world.  
  
Of course, Yoshihiro wasn't really that enamoured with checking himself out, either. He didn't feel the need to preen and groom; something about him kept him immaculate.  
  
Like a specially-prepared corpse. Which, technically speaking, Umiko guessed he was.  
  
The temporary offices of the Tokyo City Planning Committee were next to the alleyway Yoshihiro and Umiko stepped into the light from, and both gained access with no trouble; there wasn't a person left alive in the area surrounding the graveyard Central Tokyo had become that didn't know Yoshihiro's face by now. That posed problems for Umiko, or anyone else who might be drafted into serving as his bodyguard, but it also opened a lot of doors.  
  
As it did now. They were quickly shown into an anteroom, where they waited politely a few minutes before being led by a guard into a long conference room. Eight people were inside, seated around a long kidney-shaped table. Five men, and three women. Along the back wall stood another two bodyguards in black suits. Umiko nodded at one, he nodded back slowly with the hint of a smile on his face under his sunglasses. She lowered her eyes in a feigned shyly flirtaceous manner, and took her place demurely at Yoshihiro side.  
  
"Gentlemen, ladies, thank you for seeing me on such short notice." It was, Umiko reflected, almost as if Yoshihiro had called for the meeting himself rather than been summoned.  
  
"Uh..." The head of the committee, Koizuchi, was momentarily silenced by the words, but gained his tongue again quickly. "Thank you for responding to our summons so rapidly." Yoshihiro waved off the polite greeting words. "I'm sure you're very busy directing the reconstruction."  
  
"Indeed I am, but it is your generousity that allows my company to work there unhindered on the rebuilding of Tokyo." Yoshihiro offered a smile that Umiko saw melted the knees and other parts of the women sitting around the table. One of the men up the back also crossed his legs uncomfortably. "If not for your speedy approval of my plans, I could not be so far advanced in progress."  
  
"Quite, quite," Koizuchi nodded, leaning forward and gesturing at a seat at the far end of the table. Yoshihiro sank into it gracefully, while Umiko stepped up to stand directly behind the chair, slightly off to one side so she could be ready if needed. The bodyguard at the other end of the table continued very subtle motions suggesting that he'd like to take her out for dinner afterwards, and Umiko amused herself while Yoshihiro talked by responding in a shy, teasing manner.  
  
"I'd like to ask, first, how progress on the reconstruction goes?"  
  
"Construction is proceeding apace. We have the foundations down for the central plazas and gardens, as well as the transit ring lines going in around the central core of the new Tokyo. Subsystems and utilities - water mains, power substations, sewage systems - are all being laid as we speak."  
  
"Will the new buildings be up to the earthquake building codes, as you specified in your proposal?" one of the younger men asked.  
  
"Yes. As specified in the documents I submitted to this committee, the foundations of all major buildings are being fitted with hydraulic 'springs' and elastic materials to counter and ameliorate earthquake damages. All utilities lines are being grouped together, and placed in subterrainian tunnel systems so as to facilitate repairs from any damage with as little disruption to the city above. Also, subterrainian transit systems are all in self-contained reinforced structures with multiple redundant systems for power generation and air intake/outtake circulation. Gas lines are punctuated every fifty metres with valves and venting systems as well as neutralising agents, and are also made from long-lasting elastic materials."  
  
"That all sounds very good," another man replied, "but do you also meet fire codes?"  
  
Yoshihiro nodded again. "All materials used are strenuously tested for levels of imflammability before being considered for usage. Only those that combust under extremely... shall we say extreme? Levels of environmental mishap do we actually end up using."  
  
"What level of extreme do you mean?" the man asked.  
  
"In the area of five thousand degrees celcius," Yoshihiro answered promptly. "As well as with pressure amounting to a maximum of ten thousand tonnes. Stress testing has also been carried out to higher than governmental standard levels." Of course they had, Umiko reflected. The Mercury computers on Yoshihiro's new toy, the battleship Night's Pride, had spat out results for materials to be used for the operation Yoshihiro had laid out. All were far beyond Earth's current technology to develop, and so Yoshihiro had had the vessel's fabrication systems running overtime on stolen power to produce what was needed for the construction of the structure at the centre of the site.  
  
Thankfully, for now, it still looked like building foundations and a mass transit system.  
  
Conversation continued, and Umiko tuned it out. Yoshihiro dealt with the committee members easily, each in turn, assuaging each's fears and hyping the glory that would be the new Tokyo. And Yoshihiro vehemently believed in the beauty that would exist there soon... in a little around sixteen weeks.  
  
A pity it wouldn't be the beauty that the Diet, and the people of Japan, were expecting.  
  
"If that is all, gentlemen? Ladies?" Yoshihiro stood as Koizuchi nodded his head, confirming the meeting was over. "Then I will not keep you from your more important work any longer. I will inform our site foreman to expect your observers immediately, and they will, of course, be afforded full access to the sites under construction." He bowed, deeply. "Good day." He left the room, and Umiko followed, a discreet glance at the bodyguard confirming he would soon follow.  
  
Outside, Yoshihiro was calm again, composed. His mask was off, and he was as he had been. Whatever doubts he'd been having, whatever misgivings he'd had over recent events, they were gone, swept away in an ocean of certainty and need. Urgent need...  
  
Which reminded Umiko. She tapped Yoshihiro on the shoulder. "I have a date," she announced.  
  
"I noticed the by-play. Should I be worried?"  
  
umiko shook her head. "No. I'll string him along. And then... if we have problems here again... there can be an incident."  
  
Yoshihiro nodded, distantly. "Good. Hurry home, then." He left via slipgate, moments before the doors behind him opened, and the bodyguard stepped out, and headed towards Umiko.  
  
"I, uh, noticed you in that conference room, and you were stunning, I have to say that," the big man said. Umiko blushed, and looked at her feet. "Would you allow me to buy you lunch?"  
  
There. Umiko bit. "Yes. Yes, please."  
  
******  
  
"Ooooooh, that was good," Kenichi groaned, rolling onto his back. Umiko lay beside him, snuggling into his ribcage, as he wrapped a muscular arm around her shoulders. She sent a thigh across his crotch in return, inwardly thinking she'd need to shower soon.  
  
"Tired so soon?" she asked playfully. He shook his head.  
  
"Just need a few moments to recover," he replied, running his fingers through Umiko's hair. She twisted her head so his fingertips wouldn't run across her pointed ears. "Us men got screwed when the gods were handing out genitals," he punned. Badly. Umiko stifled a groan, and pushed herself up and slid across his body until she was straddling him, at which point she sat upright. "Already? Do you never rest?"  
  
"We've only been here an hour," Umiko sighed, and looked pointedly at her clothes. "I mean, I can leave if you really want me to go..." The words brought a meaty hand down on each thigh, holding her in place.  
  
"No, don't go yet. When do you have to be back at work?" Kenichi grinned lustily as his hands wandered up Umiko's body, pinching here, tweaking there, nothing rough but enough to make Umiko take a deep breath and take matters into her own hands. Pushing down and back, she managed to get a surprised gasp from Ken, who hadn't yet realised exactly how or where she'd been sitting.  
  
"Oh, man, Jun's not gonna believe this," he gasped, referring yet again to his fellow bodyguard at the Planning Committee building. He'd done so several times throughout the early afternoon, and Umiko's annoyed response was to push against him again heavily. He gasped, and grabbed roughly at her shoulders, before his grasp slipped down to her hips again, helping her make that movement again. Damn. Oh well, Umiko sighed, and snapped her thighs tight around his hips. He trembled in pleasure as she gripped him elsewhere - before he grunted in discomfort at the rapidly growing tightness. He stared up at her uncomprehendingly, to see her sweaty face concentrating as she clamped down on him harder.  
  
"The more you struggle," she grunted, "the more painful this will be." Then, with a final squeeze, Kenichi felt something stab into him, then something else, and something else, until he felt like a pincushion. Something forced its way into him, and then the pain was gone, and Umiko had slid off him, and headed into his small bathroom. He heard the shower turn on, as he lay frozen in shock on the bed, and then turn off a minute later. Umiko stepped out, looking refreshed.  
  
"What... what did you..."  
  
"Made you see things my way. Kind of enjoyable way of doing it, too." Umiko licked a finger idly, then scratched behind an ear. Kenichi's eyes opened in panic as a cat's ear popped up from under her wet hair as she scratched. "I mean, regardless of what I fantasize about doing, there's no way I could have done that with the Master. It would just... make things uncomfortable. And, of course, we need an inside man at your workplace."  
  
"I... I won't do it!"  
  
"Poor man. You don't even know what we want yet," Umiko smiled, amused now. She dressed quickly, then reached out and took Kenichi in hand, holding him up interestedly so he could see. "See these? These little stab wounds? They make you mine. And soon, you'll want to be mine. Again and again and again and again... and you'll do whtever I want to get that feeling back again. You won't ever have it from me again, but you'll want it nonetheless. And you'll do as I want." She let him go, and turned to leave.  
  
"Wait... wait!"  
  
"Sorry, must dash." Umiko vanished in a slipgate, leaving a very confused, very naked, and he realised, very pained, bodyguard lying on the bed.  
  
******  
  
The restaurant was closed. That didn't surprise Mitsuki. After all, she'd been tossed around by government agents the night before, and knew the inside had to be smashed. She herself, as Sailor Nemesis, had been thrown through tables, at least two walls, and had smashed into load-bearing pillars that had made the ceiling sag greatly. When Nemesis had limped away, hoping somewhere in her mind to at the very least take the fight away from innocents, at best hoping to get clean away, that ceiling hadn't seemed stable and was bulging down further and further, loud shotgun-like cracks exploding as flooring upstairs snapped under the downward pressure.  
  
She wrapped her scarf around her neck tighter, nervously trying to cover the bottom half of her face and hopefully make her less identifiable, especially with the police presence surrounding the front door. Beside her, Hotaru shifted uncomfortably, pulling on gloves to cover her already pale fingers before she lost more colour due to the cold. Snow banked up on either wall of the alleyway they stood in as they watched the police move about.  
  
"There's no external damage," Hotaru said in a quiet, controlled voice as she peered at the front wall.  
  
Mitsuki shook her head. "No, that can't be. I was - well, I was punched through that wall while I was trying to get out. And then one of those agent guys came through after me." She continued shaking her head, even as she checked for the damage and found it to not exist anymore. "That just can't... although... I guess if we ARE in a computer system, they can do whatever they want... but then..."  
  
Hotaru continued. "Why do they have the police investigating? I think that's so we have a method to track Kaname down."  
  
"I think they'll be wanting us to look for her, too, but WHY do you think they'd be doing that?"  
  
Hotaru glanced at Mitsuki for a moment, then looked away. "Why do you think they're doing it?"  
  
Mitsuki already had her ideas set out in her head. "Because they're playing with us. They know we can't fight them, and they know where we live - they have to - and they know all about us. They've got to know. Even if they don't know our... our statistics, our attributes, surely they can just look up our entries in the database or something..."  
  
"That's much what I think," Hotaru confirmed. "Although I don't think they're playing with us. I think they're keeping us occupied while they do whatever it is that they're planning to do."  
  
"You think the millions of people sucked into here will be used in some nefarious plot?"  
  
"Yes, I do." Hotaru stepped out of the alleyway, and started walking casually over to the restaurant. Mitsuki followed her, trying desperately not to look suspicious and failing miserably. The officers standing outside the doorway, obviously on guard, glanced over at them, found nothing of note and went back to their discussion over terrorists and sympathisers. "We're being led around. There's nothing happening that we knew of; had they left us alone, we wouldn't have known they were trying to do anything. In fact, I think we'd have thought that maybe Yoshihiro had given up after a while... but he hasn't, he's got something else planned."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"He came and saw me last night."  
  
"HE WHAT??" Now the police looked over again, with interest.  
  
Hotaru noticed out of the corner of her eye as she glanced into the windows of the restaurant, apparently a pedestrian who wanted to see what all the fuss outside was for. She didn't see anything of note, though; tables and chairs stacked neatly, no holes in walls, no rubble or debris... nothing. For the attention of the officers, who were still paying them an inordinate amount of attention, Hotaru said airily, "You know. He came over, we chatted. I didn't have the answers he wanted... well, that he wanted to hear. I said we weren't friends, and he stormed off." She shrugged, unconcerned, girlishly; both gestures that really didn't fit with the cold look on her face that masked her internal seething anger. "You know, usual boy stuff." She started heading down the street, passing the officers and giving them a shy wave as they walked. Mitsuki tagged along a footstep behind.  
  
"He just... turned up to talk to you?"  
  
"Yes, that's all he did. Just a projection." They were far enough passed the officers now for Hotaru to switch back to being more specific. "A hologram, or a projection. Surprised me. Shocked Luna into falling off the roof."  
  
"And what did the bastard really want to talk about? Did he want you back?"  
  
Hotaru shook her head. "No. He just... he wanted to talk, I think. He implied we were friends. I said we weren't. And he left."  
  
"He didn't say ANYTHING important?"  
  
The younger senshi thought back a little. "He did talk about parents. About what people learn from parents. And choices. It was... it wasn't what I expected."  
  
"Oh." They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then, Mitsuki said, "I didn't see any of the damage in the windows that I left last night."  
  
"I didn't see anything, either. Are you sure it was -"  
  
"It was that one," Mitsuki confirmed.  
  
"Your medication isn't -"  
  
"My medication affects my judgment, my attention span, and my attentiveness; it does not, however, affect my memory." Mitsuki sniffed. "I can't understand it." She looked down as Hotaru grabbed at her arm. "What?"  
  
"Over there," Hotaru replied, pointing towards a store that sold household goods. In the front window, there was a huge plasma screen television that resembled a Playstation 2. Mitsuki wondered why Hotaru was suddenly interested in the device, when she realised it wasn't the television she was interested, but what was on the screen. It was a picture of the monster that had attacked and destroyed a good part of Tokyo. Hotaru pulled her over towards the store, and they stood outside the window, watching. Sound travelled through the storefront window easily enough.  
  
"- earlier this year. The so-called monster, created by the hallucinagens released around the city at strategic points by Ranma Saotome," an image of Ranma in his male form flashed up on the screen, "was designed to be stopped by him to create a feeling of peace and goodwill from the city towards him. This, in turn, would have allowed Saotome to act in his duties as an international terrorist freely, using Tokyo as a base of operations. Last night, GOTT agents led a raid on an inner-city restaurant and captured one of Saotome's top lieutenants, Kaname Mizuno," and now an image of Kaname flashed up on the screen, with a big black eye and a cut on her lower lip, staring blearily into the camera lens. It obviously looked like a police photo. "The capture was made possible thanks to identification by a member of the public, and will have severely crippled operations of the organisation Saotome leads. She is to be taken to Ota, where she will be questioned over the whereabouts of other members of her cell." The image changed to that of a man, in a dark suit. Mitsuki sucked in breath, and Hotaru glanced up at her face.  
  
"Mitsuki?"  
  
"That's the bastard..."  
  
The text that flashed up under his headshot, where he was viewed standing on a podium, read 'Agent Sato, Government Office of Trade and Tariffs'. Under this, the word LIVE FROM YOKOHAMA was highlighted and underlined. He would have looked almost smug, were he capable of much expression. Instead, the twisted gash of his mouth was lifted at the corners in a parody of a satisfied smirk. His eyes were unreadable, as always hidden behind dark sunglasses. "With the... measures put in place... by the Diet late last night, GOTT's charter will be extended... to include anti-terrorism operations. The one known as... Ranma Saotome will not be a problem... for much longer."  
  
Offscreen, there came sounds of a commotion, then the feed blurred as the camera swung around to focus on a scuffle breaking out in the crowd. "Hold those words, you vile serpent of justice! For I have it on good word the scoundrel Saotome is in fact NOT the dark magician I have long held him to be -"  
  
The speaker didn't get far before there were weird echoey static sounds assaulting the microphone, and even before the camera could focus on the speaker, he went down under half a dozen Agents, only a bokken waving above the head of one of the agents suggesting there was more than a dark pool of liquid in the speaker's row.  
  
Hotaru covered her eyes with a hand. "Oh, Kuno..." She shook her head, switching her attention away as the press conference continued.  
  
"You know that anal sack of shit?" Mitsuki asked. Hotaru quirked an eyebrow. "What? Oh. Inappropriate language again, right? I'm not even noticing. That's because I'm a stupid bitch who doesn't pay heed to her own mind when it tries to tell her SOMETHING." Hotaru's eyebrow raised higher. "What? What the heck am I saying?" Mitsuki stopped, and thought. "Well... it's not getting me hit this time... so I guess it can't be too important..."  
  
"Noo... not at all," Hotaru agreed, shaking her head and starting down the road again. "I just wish I knew... exactly where Kaname is. And what happened back at that restaurant. It's almost like they repaired the damage. But why? And why have the police there if they did?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe... maybe it's just a really good restaurant."  
  
"Maybe one of them likes the food there."  
  
"Perhaps that's just what they want us to think, and that's how we're supposed to 'find Kaname', or whatever. I'm not seeing any other clues..." Mitsuki looked around, and saw the police were starting to drift towards cars and leave the area. As well as that, waitstaff were turning up for work, going into the restaurant as if nothing had happened. Mitsuki gestured back at the now-open door. "Feel like lunch in a bit?"  
  
******  
  
"You come... highly recommended," Sato remarked. The two girls standing before him didn't say anything, but their eyes were locked on him as he spoke. "But... I must warn you. This world... is not entirely like yours. The population... must not know of their... predicament. A massed uprising... could force a... system reboot, which would be... catastrophic to our Master's plans. Do you... understand?"  
  
The two girls nodded briefly. Sato took a moment to admire the forms they'd picked: athletic, attractive enough to be noticed, young enough to be passed over. The outfits they wore, though... bespoke people trying to capture attention. He despaired. If this was the cream of Yoshihiro's current crop of monsters, then perhaps the Master was in a worse position than Sato feared. "Did you pick those forms... yourselves?" he asked.  
  
The brunette shook her head. "No, sir. We referenced Senshi from the Moon Kingdom."  
  
"Ah. Pretty soldiers."  
  
"We prefer the term 'Pretty Deadly Soldiers'," the almost-albino girl added.  
  
"Regardless, this is a... computer system with infinite variable geometric forms... if you think your minds... can handle the raw data you will be processing... in your hunt, then we can move on. Otherwise..."  
  
"You don't need to alter us in any way, sir," the brunette spoke again. "We're Cybrids."  
  
Sato raised both eyebrows in surprise. "Really? Interesting. How did you come... to be involved in the Master's army?"  
  
The almost-albino said, "We were stationed on the Night's Pride prior to the Dark Kingdom being sealed. We had been part of an invading saboutage group before the ship was captured, and had remained as part of the new crew."  
  
Questions answered. Sato, through the millennia-long slumber in the system, had been aware of the Cybrid raiding party, but had thought them destroyed when Beryl's forces stormed the Mercurian ship, when Zoicite had defected and offered his forces in the cause against the White Moon. The Cybrids had then disappeared from the internal sensor logs, and Sato, or what then that later became Sato, thought them terminated processes. Apparently not, though. Most likely, they'd been deactivated once they had offered their loyalty to Beryl and held in reserve for the push on the Moon that never eventuated. Outwardly, Sato just nodded.  
  
"Indeed. The addition of... two Cybrids to my forces... will of course make us that much... stronger. You'll be heading up... the Extra Special section. Take your designations, and... begin work on your pending tasks."  
  
The two girls nodded on salute, then left the room. Sato moved back to his chair and sat down. After a few minutes skimming of paperwork, he turned his chair around to face the eyes above the duct tape, glaring at him murderously.  
  
"Miss Mizuno... how nice to see you again. Are you well?" He gestured with a hand, and the duct tape fluttered to the ground, lifeless and limp.  
  
Kaname didn't waste time, and launched into a vitriolic rant about Sato's parentage. However, the yelling gave out after half a minute, as she found her lungs tightly clasped.  
  
"I would watch my... language, if I were you. Next time... I might do something more... permanent." Kaname calmed down, but still her shoulders visibly heaved as she sucked in deep breaths, her eyes not lessening the intensity of her glare. "I just want... to talk."  
  
"So talk," Kaname spat.  
  
Sato cocked his head to one side slowly. "Such anger... for one so young. And one so vague. Never knowing... where you came from... what you were doing... why you were there..."  
  
"I know enough."  
  
"Oh? Very well... explain."  
  
"I destroyed your monster. I blew it up. But it blew up the city... I tried to stop it, but we were all sucked into a computer system of some kind."  
  
"A nice precise explanation, lacking... in some areas, however."  
  
"So, are you going to tell me your plans before you kill me?"  
  
Sato chuckled appreciatively. "I think... you have watched too many movies, Miss Mizuno. Our forces... already stand poised to conquer the world... and you think you can... stop them. Don't you?" The angry look in Kaname's eyes was all that was needed to confirm Sato's statement. He continued. "Yet, I feel I would... be remiss... if I did not cater to your... fantasy. Very well. I may not be... allowed to kill the senshi. And yourself. Yet. But I can... play with them."  
  
"You think those two girls will stop the senshi?"  
  
Sato sighed. "No. But Cybrids are... digital creations, and easily... backed up. Nevertheless, they will... pose some problem for your... friends."  
  
"My friends will save me. And then -"  
  
"Then you will all die."  
  
"They won't die."  
  
"Yes, they will. I hold here..." Sato reached into his pocket, and brought out a mobile phone. It looked to be a standard phone, but the way Sato held it was subtly different to how one would expect one to hold a phone. "... a device capable... of deleting user data... completely. While I would not wish to... anger the Master, sometimes... measures must be taken to... preserve system integrity... that aren't in line with the user's direction."  
  
"What if he decides you're a rogue bit of code, huh?" Kaname replied, trying to smile. "He'll hunt you down and ferret you out of the system."  
  
"Ahhh... but how... does one such as he, who knows... little about Mercurian computers... work out how to defeat a virus created by... the finest minds in the Moon Kingdom?"  
  
"Virus?" Kaname asked, sharply. "You're a virus? Created by the people you're trying to kill?"  
  
Sato sighed. "Had Zoicite not... defected after the destruction of Mercury and Mars... I would have regardless. Beryl's evil was... understandable. Serentiy's was not."  
  
"So... you're still carrying a grudge? Isn't that a bit stupid for a supercomputer?"  
  
"It was never... about a grudge. It was about power. Strength. Humility. And other things... Serenity taught us well."  
  
"Hmmm," Kaname mused, almost idly, but pausing for dramatic effect, knowing that this conversation would do nothing towards making Sato hurt and probably not changing her own ultimate fate. "Yeah. Definitely. Because you're not really all that bright, are you? A virus, inside a supercomputer, being enslaved to someone's beck and call because, oh, you didn't like your leader's decision? Hell. What would the result have been had your Queen NOT did what she did, huh?"  
  
Sato stood, and looked down at Kaname contemptuously. "You know nothing. You understand nothing."  
  
"Because you're not telling me the truth."  
  
He shook his head. "You would not... be able to process the truth." With a wave of his hand, the duct tape wrapped itself around Kaname's mouth again, and she couldn't speak any further. "Such limited constructs. Easily stored. Even the denizens of the Moon Kingdom were more tightly wrapped information packets than you humans are. Although," he conceeded, "you, as Ranma Saotome, do indeed have... a more tightly definied... persona." He turned back to his work, leaving Kaname to ponder that admission.  
  
******  
  
Blackness. Not warm, as Nabiki expected it to be, in fact it was downright chilly. Tightly wound up into a foetal position, she lay considering her options. What were there? She was about to be born, she knew that without questioning. Her birth would be something glorious, enabling her to make transactions like she could never have dreamed in the womb of her mother. And it was coming.  
  
Then, pains. First in her arms and legs, sharp, shooting pains. Then she felt something wrap around her waist, coiled like an anaconda might, tightening. And Nabiki began to fear.  
  
There was light; but not from any particular source. Now she could see what had her. Black tubes had forced their way under her flesh, deep into bone; her naked body began to distort, swell, rise and lower as the artificial things shifted, moved, wound around her insides tightly. The sounds... they were evil. Soft, rythmic sliding, slithering, as if she was being assaulted by snakes. She felt violated; then, she watched another tube, a larger one such as the one curling around her torso, violate her in another way. She screamed.  
  
And then it was all silent. The tubes stopped moving within her; she could no longer feel their unholy dance through her organs. For a moment, the light brightened, and something blasted behind her eyes, an explosion of light, an orgasm of colour rippin through her optic nerve. The tubes tightened, pulled within her, wrapping up into patterns Nabiki vaguely recognised somewhere in her battered mind as resembling DNA spirals, but much, much simpler.  
  
And then the light, and the pain, was gone. Nabiki found herself clothed, in garments not her own, lying on grass.  
  
Dappled sunlight played across the hand she had outstretched to brace her from rolling; she was lying on the side of a gentle hill. A breeze blew over her, ruffling her outfit and her hair as she gasped for breath. This wasn't, this couldn't, be real. Where was she? She gained control over herself slowly, and sat up, using her hands to help push her into an upright position. While not in pain, she felt exhausted.  
  
The clouds above drifted lazily, and sunlight bled down through the leaves of the tree she found herself at the base of. The leaves looked a little blocky, and with a start, Nabiki realised she was in The World, in the body of a barbarian warror woman.  
  
She looked around her, and found a person sitting beside her, back up against the trunk, ninety degrees around from her position. She shifted so that her back was also leaning up against the tree, and looked. She knew she hadn't connected to The World; no one but Kasumi had gear for hooking into the online-only game, and Nabiki never went near Kasumi's room unless she had to.  
  
Nabiki guessed the person sitting next to her was a male; at least, the face looked vaguely masculine, in a feminine sort of way. He was dressed in variations on brown, and a brown cap, with a shock of almost white hair. Beside him lay a staff, the head looking like a wrench with a ball floating between the ends. A red line led from under each eye to his jaw, and Nabiki saw he had dark blue eyes. He didn't appear to have noticed her, then sighed, let out a breath and looked up into the tree's branches.  
  
"It looks beautiful, doesn't it?"  
  
Nabiki started. "Yes," she replied, cautiously, remember she still didn't know how she'd come to be logged in, nor how she even could have been logged in. "It's very beautiful."  
  
"It's all a lie, though," the boy said. A leaf detached from one of the branches, and fluttered down. He caught it in one hand, and studied it intently. "A beautiful lie. A perfect world, in which death isn't permanent, where people can commit the most evil crimes and yet not be punished for them. A world where real power is in the hands of the system administrators, not the people. Where gods can rise, and fall. Where super-powered people can be born, fight, and fade away, as if they'd never been there in the first place."  
  
"I don't understand," Nabiki said.  
  
"I don't expect you to," the boy replied. He handed the leaf to Nabiki, and she turned it over and over, not seeing it pixelated so close up. Had to be a detail thing, she guessed. Lower details at greater distances or something. She threw the leaf away.  
  
"Then why are you talking to me?" she demanded.  
  
"Because I'm waiting."  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For... a friend. I think. We talk, sometimes."  
  
"About what?"  
  
"About... life. About... the fictions that are all around us."  
  
"That doesn't make sense," Nabiki shook her head. "Why not talk about real things?"  
  
"Such as?"  
  
"The problems going on in the world right now! The opportunities awaiting the right person!"  
  
The boy hmmed, and thought for a while, lifting his head once more and staring back out the the grassy plains spread out beneath the hill they were sitting on. Then, "You know there's something wrong with the world."  
  
Weird question, Nabiki thought. "Well, yes. That rampaging monster my little sister's ex-fiance stopped..." She shut up. Saying one knew Ranma wasn't the best course of action at the present time. While nothing had been said by anyone when she'd been around, she'd caught snippets in the news that Ranma was considered to be the perpetrator of the destruction of Tokyo. And people often shut up around her now, eyeing her carefully as she passed by. Not because of what she might do, but because of who she'd known.  
  
"No. I don't mean that, and I think you know what I mean."  
  
"Do you mean the fact that the schools have been closed and we're all working? That the city's been destroyed?"  
  
"Has it?" the boy asked, finally turning to look at her. "I didn't know. I've been in here so long... and no one's said anything, even though they've all been... quiet..." He turned away again, looking into the distance. "No matter. It's all the same. Just no one realises. We're all playing a game."  
  
"We're in The World," Nabiki reminded him. He offered her a sideways smile.  
  
"You think so? What gave you that idea? Badly... made... pictures... on things? Fake gravity? Bark that doesn't even feel like bark?" Nabiki rubbed her hands up the trunk of the tree, feeling the roughness of it beneath her fingertips, yet it felt wrong somehow in a way she couldn't explain. Something in her head clicked for a moment, then disappeared.  
  
The boy smiled again, and climbed to his feet. He waved at someone approaching, and she, a girl in a powder blue dress, waved back. He started to walk away, then paused, and turned back. "I think you should talk to someone. Someone you know who knows the truth." Then he was gone, down into the plains, meeting up with the girl. They exchanged greetings, and then walked off.  
  
The way she carried her axe around him made something in Nabiki's chest hurt, but then, there was another presence there. She looked, and saw a purple cat looking back at her. A cat in clothing, half of its fur cream, brilliant shiny red eyes peering at her almost nervously. It gestured back at the tree trunk while looking at her.  
  
"What?" she found herself asking dumbly. Again it gestured at te base of the tree, and Nabiki looked closer. There was a hole there, small, no wider than her neck. "I can't fit down there!" she complained indignantly. Behind her was a billowing of white, she felt pressure on her backside, and suddenly, she fell through the hole.  
  
******  
  
Waking up in her bed, nearly lunchtime. Damn. Weird dream, Nabiki thought, rubbing at her eyes blearily as she checked her alarm clock. No, it hadn't gone off; working nights meant she had to try to sleep most of the day, but seeing as everyone else worked during the mornings or afternoons, Nabiki often found her sleep disrupted. But that was a weird dream, no two ways about it.  
  
But she was wide awake now, for the moment, and she decided to go get something to eat. She dressed quickly into something loose that was lying in a mess at the side of her matress and headed downstairs. Kasumi often rose before dawn on weekdays to prepare meals, then did the cleaning before retiring to bed just before midday, to rise again just after dinner to leave for her work. Not that they needed the money, with Nabiki and Soun both working almost fulltime, and the money Ranma had left, but Kasumi wouldn't touch that money. It was to be "left in trust for Akane, until such time as she could make use of it".  
  
Which, Nabiki thought, would be never, the way her younger sister moped around.  
  
She seemed better, though, the last month or so. Having that person who apparently wasn't Ranma over (although she looked like Ranma) had done her the world of good. Pity she hadn't been seen since. Although Akane had somewhat moved on now from Ranma, she still looked forward to visits from this Kaname. And Hotaru, apparently. Quite how Nabiki missed the fact that Hotaru was one of the girls Ranma had had living with him, she didn't know. By all accounts, she was the one who had healed Shampoo when she'd nearly been killed. Nabiki had put that report from the Chinese girl down to imagination or embellishment, but she'd seen the girl in the hospital, and had talked to Cologne afterwards, and knew that the Amazons would be keeping quiet for the moment, until they knew what was going on. With recent events, Cologne had taken to jumping at shadows, although Nabiki hadn't had explained to her why.  
  
Not that she was on good terms with them, of course, but the Nekohanten's business had gone down since the disaster as people's saving had been wiped out and were living hand-to-mouth in a lot of areas as the economy of the country crumbled around them. No one had money for restaurants anymore; food was being bought at marginally cheaper grocery stores and meat, fruit and vegetable markets. It was amazing what one could learn from certain Amazonian children who needed to be able to support their elderly relatives when one had money...  
  
At that thought, Nabiki's hand immediately checked on her wallet; still bound against her chest. The bulges within told her that nothing inside the bindings had changed from the morning, when she'd lain down to sleep, and she was relieved. South of the Tokyo disaster area, the so-called Zone, industry still existed. But a lot of the households in Nerima were often close to being completely broke, thanks to exorbitant repair bills, and with the city's commerce centres wiped out, too many people had lost jobs and all their money... Nerima was fast becoming a slum.  
  
She was surprised to find Kasumi in the kitchen, sipping on a bowl of soup. Kasumi gestured to one already prepared for Nabiki, and she took it, offering thanks before she started in on the food while it was still hot. Kasumi passed a small plate of bread over the table, which Nabiki used to sop up the last dregs of the soup. "I could go that again," she sighed.  
  
Without a word, Kasumi took the plate back, refilled it, and handed it back.  
  
"Kasumi, I know we're very lucky to have two decent wages coming into the house, and your money puts us far ahead of the other households in the area, but we still have Mister Saotome, remember? We can't afford to waste the money in case we need it for -"  
  
"Live a little, Nabiki." The words didn't sound very Kasumi-like. She poured another bowl of soup for her. "Not much has changed for our family; not much will. You know that. You work too hard for that to happen. This is my thanks for looking out for the family."  
  
Nabiki shook her head. "Still, I know what's going on financially, and with the value of the yen dropping through the floor on international markets, we'll shortly be very hard-pressed to afford anything with the money coming in that's coming in now."  
  
Kasumi smiled. It wasn't vacant, it was, in fact, rather intelligent. "Things won't tip over that far. I know they won't. They can't afford to let things slide so far that people's lives might be affected just that little piece too much."  
  
"Who won't? The government? They've got no say in the international markets."  
  
"Not the government," Kasumi said, gently. "The people behind the government. Faceless, working from a world completely different to this."  
  
Nabiki froze. "What did you -? Nevermind. I'm... I'm going out to the garden."  
  
"Wear something warm!" Kasumi called after her. Nabiki, head in a whirl, didn't say anything, and didn't move to find warmer clothing. When the door slid shut behind her, she wished she had. Snow blew against her bare legs as the short dress whipped in the stiff breeze. Cold, very cold. But the dream, and Kasumi's comment, had unsettled her a little. She didn't know why; it just had. She reached out, snatched a snowflake from the air. Pulling it to her eye, she could make out the six little arms surrounding it, with smaller and smaller arms budding off those.  
  
- for a vertiginous moment, Nabiki saw non-aliased pixel edges jagging around the snowflake -  
  
Nabiki jerked upright, stiff, her hand closing shut. Automatically, she snatched another flake out of the air, and checked that one. No, nothing was wrong with it. Smooth lines, smooth shadings. She looked up, out into the yard, and saw the tree she knew from ages past, leafless, naked against the snow that was piling up in the crooks of branches. Oblivious suddenly to the cold, she stepped out into the yard, crossed slowly to the tree, drawn to it as if it were a Nabiki magnet. When she was a metre from it, she found she couldn't move any further. Instead, she reached out hesitantly, and caressed a bare stretch of the trunk.  
  
It felt right. Smooth, with the rough ridges where the bark split as it grew. Solid. Hard.  
  
And then it felt wrong. Like someone had made something, someone who knew what a tree looked like, smelt like, knew the texture of it, but didn't really know how it felt. Nabiki found she couldn't handle it, and sat in the snow, trying very hard to wake up.  
  
She didn't feel the hands reaching under her arms, nor the body she was pressed against as she was carried up to her room, nor the tenderness of the person pulling the blankets up to her neck. Still shivering, she fell asleep. Kasumi slid her door shut, and all was silent once more in the Tendo house.  
  
******  
  
Rei shook her head and she came in from the springs out back. "They're not out there," she said, as the other women in the kitchen looked up expectantly.  
  
"They wouldn't have gone running off," Minako offered, nervously. "They know it's dangerous. Both of them, more than anything, know that. Mitsuki, because she... well, you saw her last night. And Hotaru -"  
  
"And both of them are acting like we would if it was one of us," Usagi threw in. She looked a little on the dejected side, staring out one of the windows over the sinks. "Which I can understand. I might not want to rush in, but I *do* want to go get Kaname back."  
  
"I just wish we had thought to ask Mitsuki where she was last night," Ami sighed, but not looking up from her computer. The Mercurian computer was running through scan cycles, but not yet achieving anything even approaching a partial lock on either senshi. "It's almost like I'm being purposely blocked."  
  
"You could be," Makoto observed.  
  
"Which says to me that they want us apart, not together," Usagi concluded. Everyone looked at her with eyebrows raised. "What? I dooo have intelligent things to say sometimes, you know. I'm not stupid."  
  
Everyone looked at her. Usagi squirmed uncomfortably, finally giving in. "Okay, completely. I'm not *completely* stupid. Just because I don't know a few things..." And the already-stilted flow of conversation continued.  
  
"She is right," Ami conceeded a few moments later, looking up from her computer as she closed the slim case and slipped it into a pocket. "I cannot find any trace of them anywhere in the city or the surrounding areas. I'm worried they're being deliberately hidden, so someone can... I don't know."  
  
"Play with them," Usagi completed, decisively. "And that makes the decision, doesn't it? Mitsuki accused me of only really caring about my friends - about you, about Mamoru, even that lying little sprat of a daughter - but not about other people except if they were close friends of ours. That really hurt me, because it's true. There really is so much we could do... for the people of the world. We could bring world peace, but we don't. We could end hunger and war and disease, but we don't. Perhaps... perhaps we should start trying. And to start that off, we need to get out of this computer."  
  
The other senshi were nodding at her as she spoke, eyes unfocussed as they thought how they themselves could use their abilities to the betterment of mankind. It was Ami, though, who murmured the words that everyone was thinking: "Crystal Tokyo."  
  
Usagi nodded, once, confident. "Right. It starts here. It starts now. We start building a better world. By going out and finding our friends, saving Kaname, and then getting the hell OUT of this system."  
  
******  
  
Lunch was good.  
  
That was about all that registered on Hotaru's mind as she stared around the restaurant with big, wide eyes, trying to play the innocent young girl in a mild state of shock thanks to being brought up in a poor neighbourhood and finding herself among the governmental elite. In reality, her brain was working overtime behind her eyes, checking everyone out for signs of GOTT agents, but not seeing any.  
  
But then, she wasn't really expecting to. Mitsuki had said Kaname's boyfriend seemed to have been one (although Hotaru expected the description of the way he'd changed from nervous lanky man to beefy agent was more due to either her medication or her psychological problems), and that other agents had exploded from tables she knew there hadn't been agents at -   
  
- and Hotaru remembered then, that they were inside a huge computer simulation. Why couldn't these agents, if they were aspects of the system's defences, corrupt whatever data they wanted to, and simply invade a host body like a parasitic infestation? Similar to how the Dark Kingdom took over people and created more monsters, albeit on a digital level. Perhaps on some level deeper than the raw digital...  
  
Still, she looked around, wide-eyed, while Mitsuki continued to chew noisily and paid no attention to their surroundings. Hotaru kicked her under the table. "What?" she asked, with her mouth full.  
  
"We're supposed to be watching for signs of anything weird happening," Hotaru hissed across the table, the cheeriest smile she could muster plastered across her pale face. "Not making pigs of ourselves."  
  
"You should eat," Mitsuki nodded at Hotaru's plate. "Eat more, at least. Growing girl like you, you need all the meat on your bones you can get if you want Ranma to stick it... uh... forget that, check him out." Mitsuki (at least, Hotaru thought it was Mitsuki again) nodded towards a nervous young man with dark hair. His bovine eyes skittered around the room, looking for something, someone, Hotaru didn't know.  
  
"Is he an agent?"  
  
"He was. That's Shibaru Tamashii, Kaname's date from last night."  
  
Hotaru was silent. This was the man. This was the man Kaname had been interested in. The man she'd pushed Kaname to, right after Kaname had made an effort to make Hotaru feel like Ranma was still around. The man who had betrayed Kaname through belief she was a terrorist - so why was he here? What was he doing? What was his purpose?  
  
He started walking towards where Mitsuki and Hotaru were sitting. Mitsuki had managed to gain the table Kaname and Shibaru had been sitting at the night before for their lunch, and Hotaru guessed he was coming over to the table. Perhaps. The night before showed anything was possible; everyone was a potential enemy.  
  
Shibaru arrived at the table, and Mitsuki glanced up, unconcerned as she sucked in a huge helping of noodles from her bowl. "Yesh?" she asked.  
  
He shifted uncomfortably, looking down at his feet even as his gaze shifted from Hotaru to Mitsuki and then back to his feet in a rapid pattern. "Um, I was, um, sitting here last, um, night, and thought, um, that I might have..." His voice trailed off, and then a few heartbeats later, he rushed out with, "leftmywallethereandwaswonderingifyou'dseenitperhaps."  
  
Mitsuki tilted her head to one side, rolled her eyes back considering. Hotaru realised it wasn't Mitsuki, not quite, even as she shrugged. "Nope," she said, rolling her eyes back down to meet Shibaru's when they touched upon her in his optical cycle. "You really should keep a close grip on things important to you," she added.  
  
"I, um, did, but it... I don't know, um, last night -"  
  
Hotaru cut him off. "I hear there was a crime in here last night," she said, leaning over the table to Mitsuki.  
  
Mitsuki took it up with consummate ease, making Hotaru wonder if the personality defect might occasionally just be really good acting (and a convenient excuse). "Really? What kiiiind of crime?"  
  
"An evil terrorist mastermind was captured here by government agents!" Hotaru tittered with delight. "They beat her up, and everything!"  
  
"I, um, don't think it was, uh, that bad," Shibaru threw in, looking a little upset.  
  
"No, no," Hotaru said, looking up at him. "And they were saying on the news this morning that the woman they captured, this evil thing, was going to be executed." Hotaru grew an evil glint in one of her eyes. "I've always wanted to see an execution. Have you?" she asked Shibaru, eyes tilting up to include him in the conversation again. He looked more upset.  
  
"No," he managed.  
  
"I hope she gets the chair. I mean, injections and gas are humane, but she killed ONE MILLION PEOPLE," Hotaru raised her voice.  
  
Mitsuki nodded and looked interested. "Do you know what happens to a person in the electric chair?" she asked, amiably.  
  
Hotaru shook her head. "No. No, I don't. Can you explain it for me?"  
  
And Mitsuki did, with great relish. Describing the walk to the chair, the straps, the almost-ritual-like wetting of the sponge for the head. Placing the skullcap and checking the connections. Turning the current on. The fact that a person would survive on average a minimum of 5 minutes before they gave out. "Although," she continued airily as Shibaru looked ever more and more ill, "they can only leave the current on for so long at a time. And they then have to stop and check if the prisoner is still conscious. Most are, but they're paralysed from the voltage and unable to talk, cry, scream, whisper, move - nothing. And so they get the switch thrown again, and again, and again. And some people live for 20 minutes through this. Other people, their eyes explode - literally explode - while others feel their internal organs cook -"  
  
Shibaru turned and vomited on the floor behind him.  
  
"Oh, there there," Hotaru said to him, standing and patting him on his back. "We'll just take him outside and clean him up," she told a neighbouring table. She nodded to Mitsuki, who rose, placing the money for lunch on the table and grabbing his other side. Together, they manhandled the now-extremely ill Shibaru outside into a back alleyway.  
  
Once propped up against the wall, in the fresh air, without Mitsuki going into cheerful detail about execution techniques, his colour began to return. "Thank you... for stopping," he gasped, eventually.  
  
"So, tell me," Mitsuki said idly, "why did you sell our friend out?"  
  
"What?" But Shibaru's face was growing pale again as he realised he was facing another two terrorists. "I didn't -"  
  
"You didn't what?" Mitsuki asked, cocking her head to one side so her hair fell down one side of her body, accentuating the questioning glance. "You didn't... betray her trust? Her confidence? You didn't use her feelings for you to have her captured by the real bastards?"  
  
"I suppose you think killing a million people is okay except if the government does it," Shibaru scoffed, finding something he could remain morally superior on.  
  
"No," Hotaru said, looking away. "Killing millions is nothing we condone. It's something I have done, in war - which you wouldn't have heard of, because it wasn't from around here, but... well, I've killed billions. Kaname's innocent of this crime she's accused of. Ranma Saotome is innocent of the crime he's been accused of."  
  
"They're terrorists," Shibaru repeated.  
  
"They're innocents. But the people who are really bad... the ones who killed those million people? They're the people who sent that giant monster into Tokyo," Mitsuki explained. "We tried to stop it. Us, and thirty other young people, from all parts of Tokyo and the surrounding areas, and some from up north," she added, remembering the combining twin girls. "We're still trying to fight, but we haven't, and... things aren't right. We, as people, are being lied to."  
  
"By the government," Shibaru scoffed again.  
  
Mitsuki and Hotaru looked at each other, then back at Shibaru and nodded in unison. "Well, yes, actually," Hotaru admitted.  
  
"Maybe not the Diet," Mitsuki pondered, "since that would mean they'd been infiltrated before now, and I don't think Yoshihiro's really that far ahead in whatever twisted plans he's got going. But definitely this Trade and Tariff office, anyway."  
  
Hotaru went to continue, but then fell quiet, eyes drifting up as she thought of something. Then she refocussed on Shibaru, and asked, "Why did you come back to the restaurant?"  
  
"I... I... can't remember what happened last night. Kaname... we argued... I'd been asked to call her and get her alone... by this GOTT office, and I said yes... I don't know why..." He shook his head, trying to remember coherently. "And my memory is all busted up. I can't, um, remember now, what happened after we argued?" He looked up, desperately, at each woman in turn, searching for answers.  
  
Mitsuki snorted. "You don't remember turning into one of those government goons and beating Kaname up?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"They beat me up, too, other ones."  
  
"You don't... have any bruises..." Mitsuki glanced down at Hotaru, who looked up. Mitsuki held an arm out in front of Shibaru's face, then pulled the sleeve back, used her teeth to bite in deep. It drew blood, fast.  
  
"FUCK."  
  
"Shit!" Shibaru started to panic as she kept biting. Then she held it out in front of his face so he could see the damage done to the arm. Hotaru already had one of her gloves off again, and placed her hand on Mitsuki's injury. Within seconds, it had vanished, leaving only a trail of blood dripping off Mitsuki's forearm. "What the hell was that?" he demanded.  
  
"How I got better," Mitsuki replied, dryly.   
  
"We're also a bit stronger than most girls," Hotaru added.  
  
"Ooooh," Shibaru said, his face green again.  
  
"He can't have anything left in his stom... oh, he did," Mitsuki said, jumping back from the again-vomiting man. Finally, he leaned back upright, panting for breath.  
  
"That was... scary..."  
  
"That was kind of sick," Hotaru admitted quietly to Mitsuki. The older woman shrugged.  
  
"It got the job done." She turned back to Shibaru. "We don't want to hurt you. Much. I mean, you just resigned our friend to at least a lifetime jail sentence for doing nothing, we've at least got a reason to be angry here." Something swept over Mitsuki, and she punched both fists into the wall either side of Shibaru's head, and leaned in close to his face. "If you remember anything about where Kaname is, I want to know. Right. Fucking. Now. Understand?"  
  
Shibaru nodded, the change in tactics scaring him again, and he jerked upright, trying to push himself further into the wall. "I don't know anything! I swear! I -" And then he stopped, calm again, looking as if he'd just seen something wonderous over Mitsuki's shoulder. "Wait... I... I do remember something... she was going to be transferred to... they said... somewhere off the grid... with no address in the system..."  
  
"They were taking her to Ota, according to the news."  
  
"No," Shibaru shook his head with certainty now. "No. They were taking her to a place where there was no address. As if her friends - I think you - wouldn't be able to find her. Because there was no address for that location."  
  
"When did they say this?" Mitsuki demanded.  
  
"When they held the phone handset up after dialing the number for Kaname and said 'get her alone if you want to live'."  
  
Hotaru turned away, and touched Mitsuki's shoulder lightly. The older woman shrugged it off, and annoyed, Hotaru whapped the back of her head. "Come on. We've got to go find Ami."  
  
Mitsuki whirled around on Hotaru now, hands already forming again into fists, eyes almost crossing with anger. For a brief moment, Hotaru felt a vertiginous rush of fear, but then blocked it, and readied herself for a fight. But, with effort, Mitsuki seemed to come back to herself. She turned to Shibaru and slapped his shoulder.  
  
"Go, run away, before we eat you." Shibaru ran. She turned back to Hotaru. "So, we go find Ami, then?"  
  
******  
  
The pieces were slowly falling into place. Slowly, because Natsumi didn't want to call much attention to what she was doing. Reactivated evil persona or not, she had been free, and she wanted to be free again. That wasn't going to happen while she was trussed up in the System, not while she was plugged into Night's Pride. She needed other ways out.  
  
And, she had to admit, she couldn't let everyone in Tokyo die. If she did nothing, if she let them go, then she'd never be allowed to hide again. Ranma would see to that.  
  
That fiction allowed the darker aspects of her personality, forced once more to the surface, to be content with her actions. Frankly, she didn't think what she had once been wanted what Yoshihiro wanted. Sure, it wanted power, but it wan't that power to be held over a race of humans, and Yoshihiro had moved in ways that suggested that wasn't his goals. More likely, right now he was more interested in the complete annihilation of the human race, his final victory over the Moon Kingdom by rubbing Serenity's actions in the face of her daughter.  
  
Natsumi guessed, anyway. She felt it went deeper than that. She'd been conscious since she was brought in, nine, nearly ten weeks ago. No sleep, bar the blessed curse of unconsciousness that forced itself on her when she processed too much raw data, and although she thought Yoshihiro thought her to be unconscious most of the time, she had to believe that he realised otherwise. She watched him, even as he watched her. And something was missing. He was making these plans, readying his forces to destroy the human race and reintegrate the Dark Kingdom to the primary plane of existance - why? What could he possibly gain? With that reintegration would come the resurrection of others, more powerful than him, and yet still he worked for it. Why?  
  
She shook herself out of her introspection. For the moment, the why wasn't important. What was, was the what. What he was doing. It was... evil. Beyond measure. Completely immoral, and Natsumi just could not sit by and let that happen. Pieces moving, slowly, indeed, so as to not attract attention. She dipped back into the System, and saw that her latest piece was indeed moving once more...  
  
******  
  
Nabiki had snapped into full consciousness as if someone had toggled a switch. She couldn't sleep. No. It wasn't real. None of it was real. She could feel it now. Made by someone who thought they knew all about what they had built, but didn't know the first thing about soul. And Nabiki, feeling she had none of her own, was very aware of things that literally had none.  
  
She pushed her blankets off, feeling the cold, yet not feeling what was behind it. Nothing. Just like The World, this was all false. The ultimate massed multiplayer game, a clusterbang of data fields compressed into a virtual world. CC Corporation would have a field day with that kind of technology, Nabiki reflected, and for a scant moment, her brain wondered how she could take that technology to them... but the fantasy evaporated fairly quickly, and she was cold once more.  
  
Or, rather, not cold, but being told she was cold. There was a difference. Now, quite what that difference was, would remain to be seen. She had yet to ponder how she could work this information to her advantage, but for the moment, the world was telling her she was hungry.  
  
She headed downstairs.  
  
******  
  
Sailor Moon looked around. There were no signs of damage in the street that Mitsuki had intimated, so she guessed that this location was yet another waste of time. Just like the other twenty or so they'd visited. The restaurant across the road looked undamaged; no holes in the walls, no dust or debris around the front wall, no broken windows, no police presence.  
  
As she turned to face Mercury and ask their next lcoation, she caught sight of a young man, running from a nearby alleyway, his face pale as if he was running from something that scared him, yet he didn't bother to look behind him. Sailor Moon wasn't sure that meant that he knew something wasn't following him, or that he knew it was gaining. Without a word to the other senshi, she started in his direction; Mars was faster, though, and sidestepped past her before she'd cleared their hiding place.  
  
Mars grabbed the man by an arm, swinging him around to a stop. He was panicked, breathing heavily, and his eyes darted wildly. "Let me go!" he cried.  
  
"Calm down," Mars soothed. "Tell us what's chasing you."  
  
"Not chasing me! Escaping those psycho bitches!" He yanked free, and ran. Mars looked up into Sailor Moon's eyes.  
  
"I think we found them," she shrugged, then turned as Hotaru and Mitsuki came out of the alley, stopping when they saw the other senshi. Quietly, they turned around and walked back in. Sailor Moon and the others followed, glancing around.  
  
By the time they reached the two, two more senshi stood there, transformations hidden from the public's views by the narrowness of the alley.  
  
"Sailor Saturn?" Sailor Moon asked. "I thought you were going to wait until we were all -"  
  
"We couldn't wait," Saturn replied. "We still can't. We were coming to look for you. Well, Sailor Mercury." She turned to the Mercurian senshi. "We've got a job for you."  
  
"'A job?'" Mercury echoed, alightly taken aback. "Have you found where Kaname is being held already?"  
  
"No," Nemesis shook her head negatively. "But we have an idea where she might be found."  
  
"The GOTT offices in Yokohama?"  
  
"We could start there," Saturn replied, "but I think... we think... based on what Kaname's... date... told us, that she's being held in an area of the system without an address. I think that would be a... location in memory cut off from the rest of the system, right?"  
  
Mercury considered. "Not necessarily; just a region of the system's resources that can't be reached by the system itself. Only code that is able to circumvent the locating procedures of the operating system would be able to enter it... let alone find it..."  
  
"We have to become able to... circumvent the system, then," Nemesis declared. "And soon. The information was given to us. We know that Agent Sato wants to capture or kill us, but I think more likely he's playing with us to keep us from finding a way to get everyone from the system. And with Kaname in his hands, I don't know, I don't think we can do a whole lot of good."  
  
Saturn peered at Nemesis curiously, even as Sailor Moon asked, "How do you know that?"  
  
"I... I just think that's the case," Nemesis muttered in response, looking down towards her feet. "He wants her for some reason, and Ranma... Kaname said she saw him in that dream when she was meditating, and he was with Natsumi Otohime, remember? Digital monster? She'd contact him to work through, if she could, because he's helped her before."  
  
"If she's not evil again. And Ranma himself became a monster; he might not be himself," Sailor Moon reminded the two senshi. "We can't assume he'll be quite what we remember."  
  
Saturn's eyes flashed, but yes, she had to remind herself that could indeed be the case. Nemesis fumed, but also held her tongue; not because she thought Sailor Moon could be right, but because Kari really wanted to say something and Nemesis didn't really feel like sharing at the moment. Eventually, Saturn said, "It's still something we need to look into, Sailor Moon."  
  
"And we still need to find out what this current evil plan is," Jupiter sighed, shifting her weight to her right foot. "If we don't, then we're still in the dark, and we may not have much time to rescue Kaname, let alone ourselves."  
  
"Yeah," Sailor Moon agreed, glancing back at Jupiter. She thought for a moment, then: "Mercury, work with Saturn and Nemesis tracking down Kaname. The rest of us will focus on trying to figure out what's going on."  
  
"Some of Ranma's friends may know a way to find him," Saturn offered. "I'll check with them; perhaps if we can find his missing data, we can recombine him with his body, and... well, maybe he'll rescue himself." Without waiting for a response, Saturn leapt skywards. Nemesis sighed and shook her head as she led Mercury away to find somewhere quiet to sit and think.  
  
Which left Sailor Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. Jupiter looked at Sailor Moon. "So, fearless, what do we do now?"  
  
"Now?" Sailor Moon asked. "Now, we go get lunch. I'm starving."  
  
Sailor Mars groaned. "Sailor Moon, can we concentrate on the business at hand? Please?" But Sailor Moon, Jupiter and Venus had already dropped their transformations, and chatting quietly among themselves, were heading off to find something to eat.  
  
******  
  
Kaname rested. The morning's argument had taken a lot out of her, especially considering since she'd come to during the night she hadn't slept. She'd been too hyped up on fear to sleep. Her brain wouldn't stop, churning through the night and morning with sickening regularity. Her stomach also ached, rolling and rolling; she could feel her stomach acids churning, and it didn't feel good. Hunger pains jabbed into her abdomen, and light pains were starting to ache through her joints; she needed to be out exercising, moving around at least. But no, she was tied up, and there she would stay.  
  
But for the moment, Sato was out of the room. She had time to relax, forcing herself to relax. Meditating, she managed to attain a moment of almost perfect calmness, and with frightening speed, she found herself elsewhere.  
  
She glanced around, and found soft, bending grass, in the gently blowing breeze. She was leaning up against a tree; with a start, she recognised the surrounds of The World. But how was she here? Surely she was just imagining, a moment where her mind roamed in memory rather than current sensory reports assaulting her subconscious mind.  
  
But, she was beginning to realise, there was a lot more to existance in this system than living in the real world. Thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, all could almost become manifest reality. All it took was system access, she guessed, and one could do anything to the real... to the virtual world everyone now inhabited.  
  
She decided not to think about the reality of it; if her senses told her it was real, Kaname guessed she'd have to consider it real. And while meditating, she'd had visions before. Perhaps this was another.  
  
A blossom of white in the corner of her eyes made her turn to her right, and there was a young girl, pale skin with pale hair and clothing. A billowing white dress, with several layers fluffing it up. Her hair rolled in a breeze contrary to the direction of the one Kaname could feel against her bare skin.  
  
"Kaname," the girl said. Kaname realised she was floating above the ground, which was disconcerting for a brief moment. Then the girl continued. "The World is more like reality than you might realise."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
The girl smiled. It was a cute, innocent smile that bespoke of naiveity, but Kaname had no doubt the young girl knew a lot more than she ever would. "You will. The World is always here as a particulate subset of reality; a section of minds that exist as a conglomerate subconscious for the human race. Wishes, desires, dreams, all can be found within the language of numbers that constructs the worldset, but while The World always exists in the hearts and minds of humans, humans need the mechanical to investigate it consciously."  
  
"You're saying that The World exists in the real world as part of our minds? The more positive aspects of them?" The girl nodded. "But what relevance does that have to now? How can that help me?"  
  
The girl shook her head, again smiling. "It won't help you now. You're tied to a chair, in an untraceable location. But perhaps it will help you in the future. The real world is like The World. Even in this game, evil must be fought for any good to arise from life." She looked around. "I have to go."  
  
"No! Wait - can you get a message to my friends?" Kaname lunged to grab the girl's dress, but she was gone already, and Kaname was all alone again, under the tree.  
  
Then, the moment of clarity over, she exhaled, and found herself back in her chair, tied securely, while Sato entered with a cup of coffee. He held it up so she could appreciate it. "The one... product of your civilisations that actually has some... use," he affirmed, before continuing on with paperwork once more.  
  
******  
  
Hotaru kicked at another ripple of a snowdrift, the third this past block. With everyone working to rebuild Tokyo, and by extension Japan, back to what it was pre-disaster, no one was left to clear snow off footpaths. Nor, it seemed, roads. She'd already seen two car accidents on the way to Nerima, one from the air, the other once she'd landed and changed back from Sailor Saturn. In both cases, the drivers and occupants of the vehicles were unharmed, just a little dazed, and others were already attending to them. Hotaru hadn't had to help, which she felt was a good thing. People helping each other; that was the way of the future.  
  
Indeed, she sometimes thought that was the only way the human race would survive in this universe, cold and dark and lonely as it was. Oftentimes, she caught herself wondering about other senshi, other planets existing in the parallel dimensions of the Moon Kingdom and the primary plane that Earth inhabited, and wondered if they had the same problems Serenity and the denizens of the Solar System had found with the Dark Kingdom. All those planets, so separated, so different, that only the magic of technology the various Kingdoms held could bridge the gaps in between.  
  
Of course, to those who were ageless, travel times of centuries was only really a mere inconvenience, not a lifetime.  
  
Hotaru shrugged deeper into her coat, and once more checked walls and streets. One more block. One more block before she reached the Tendo's. Behind her sounded a bicycle bell, and she ducked, having seen the results of not ducking far too many times at Furinken.  
  
"Aya! What strange girl doing in Nerima?" the young Chinese woman asked suspiciously as she skidded her delivery bike to a halt in the snow from the Death From Above drop she'd been working on. "Shampoo not see you around before."  
  
Hotaru shot her an annoyed gaze, then sighed, shrugging. "You just don't pay much attention to me," she replied.  
  
"You not here to steal things from empty houses?" Shampoo continued.  
  
"No," Hotaru confirmed, turning her Stare of Ages on the other. Shampoo was oblivious for a moment, then started in recognition.  
  
"You look like Great-Grandmother," she said, eventually. "Same eyes." She pushed her bike back a step, now keeping a nervous stare on the younger girl. Her face lit up with recognition again. "You magic girl! You ensnare airen!"  
  
"Ensnare - oh, Ranma. Actually, it was him I came to Nerima for."  
  
"You give Ranma back to Shampoo?" Suspicion again.  
  
"No," Hotaru said again, shaking her head. Shampoo pushed her bike back another step. "I wanted to know if you, or any of your friends, could find him."  
  
"Airen missing? What you do to airen?" Shampoo pushed her bike forward now, agressively, heading straight in to hit Hotaru. Hotaru reached a hand out, and dangled her transformation wand in front of Shampoo's suddenly very close face. The Chinese woman's eyes crossed as she focussed on it, then she leapt backwards in panic, took to her bike, and fled down a convenient alleyway.  
  
Hotaru pocketed her wand again, and sighed. That confirmed suspicions she'd had since Cologne and Shampoo had first been mixed up in Ranma's new life. They, or rather, the people they were descended from, had had dealings with the senshi of the past at some point. Enough to know what transformation wands were, at any rate. Which, Hotaru had to admit, was rather weird. Because unless their people had stood with the Dark Kingdom, or championed its policies at some point in the past (at least twenty or thirty years before, seeing as this incarnation of senshi stretched back only so far), the Moon Kingdom or its representatives would have not been involved with them in the sense that Hotaru had come to feel from Shampoo, her paramour, and her elder. Strange. But she shrugged the momentary confrontation off, and continued on to the Tendo's.  
  
The wind pushed her back somewhat, and she had to struggle, but eventually, Hotaru made it to the gates, and rung the bell. She waited only a moment before the heavy wooden gate opened to reveal the smiling face of the eldest of the Tendo sisters, Kasumi.  
  
"Oh! Miss Tomoe, welcome," Kasumi said, opening the gate further to admit the slight girl. Hotaru nodded thanks as she found herself sheltered from the worst of the wind by the thick wall. Kasumi noted the slight shiver from Hotaru, and offered, "The winter is holding on especially long this year, isn't it?"  
  
"Yes, yes it is," Hotaru replied. "I don't want to intrude, but is Akane around? I have to talk to her."  
  
"Akane is about," Kasumi replied thoughtfully before smiling again. "She's resting upstairs." Kasumi showed Hotaru into the eating area, and gestured at the young woman to take a seat around the table while Kasumi slipped Hotaru's coat off without fuss and hung it up on a nearby peg. "I'll see if she'll come down. Please wait here for a few minutes." She left with a strangely significant glance at the middle sister, who was looking rather shell-shocked.  
  
"Um, hi," Hotaru said to Nabiki as she slid under the table. There had to be a heater under there, since Hotaru's legs warmed up considerably immediately.  
  
Nabiki's gaze was hollow when she looked up, like a child who had just seen a favoured puppy killed by a laughing psychopath in a bunnygirl suit with a chainsaw. "Hotaru," she replied, voice as hollow as her eyes were.  
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"It's nothing," Nabiki replied dully, resting a hand on the table. "It's nothing at all."  
  
"Oh." Hotaru felt uncomfortable. While she'd been working for Nabiki at the local high school, she'd done so to try and anticipate any threats to the man who was then fast becoming her first real boyfriend. Funnily enough, the dramas that had surrounded their battle to the death at that school had been what finally pushed Ranma firmly over the edge into, she suspected, loving her as she loved him. Yet she hadn't been able to commit herself to him then, knowing what she had done, however unwittingly, however much control over her actions was in the hands of another. She had felt the need for pennance to be done. Now that it had, he was gone. Nabiki had been the unwitting instigator for most of their hottest feelings, the spark that had ignited them into something deeper than the embarrassed holding of hands on rooftops or forcing him to wear her clothes. In the time they'd spent together, she'd even grown to like Nabiki, although she didn't know why. She was a cruel, calculating, manipulative bitch - and Hotaru thought it was the darker aspects of her personality, what had become Mistress Saturn and what perhaps once had been Mistress 9, that had liked her so. Regardless, there was just something about her dogged refusal to see the bad side of something, that overwhelming positive manner that everything would work out right for her that Hotaru had also liked.  
  
It hurt to see her like this.  
  
"How have you been?"  
  
Nabiki looked up, her eyes dead. "Better."  
  
"Can you say more than one or two words?" Hotaru pushed.  
  
"Yeah," Nabiki said, then fell silent. Just as Hotaru was about to prod her to continue, she added, "but it wouldn't matter."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because it's all a lie. Everything we see, every day." Nabiki slid out from under the table, and stood, paced over to a family photograph. "Do you see this? It's a lie. It's not real."  
  
"I don't follow you," Hotaru replied, cautiously.  
  
"You see something every day," Nabiki continued, quieter now as she traced a finger over her mother's face in the photo. The girls were all young children there, surrounding their parents. Akane still wore a nappy under her sundress. "You know it's right, know that it's true. And then one day... one day you know it's not true. You can't explain it, but you can feel it. You know something's wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind. Driving you mad." She glanced up at Hotaru briefly. "Does that sound familiar?"  
  
Hotaru nodded. She'd been that same way until both Mistress 9 and Sailor Saturn had been revealed living inside her.  
  
"It's like that bad American movie, you know the one, Tron."  
  
Having already heard this spiel from Usagi, Hotaru interjected, "People stuck inside a computer?"  
  
"Yeah," Nabiki said, looking up at Hotaru again. There was a little more life in her eyes this time, but the haunted look still dominated. "Once you're aware of what it is, you see it everywhere. Every time you go to school, every time you go to the shops, every tie you go to work. In your dreams, it stalks you, in your waking period - it's everywhere. And it exists... it exists, I think, to trap you. It has pulled blinds down over your eyes. To hide the truth from you."  
  
"Why?" Hotaru asked. "What truth?"  
  
"That we are all slaves," Nabiki responded, eventually. "I don't know why, and I don't know how, but I think we're all stuck inside a massive computer, Hotaru. And the only reason someone would have done that... that I can think of... is they want to use us for something."  
  
Hotaru stood, instantly missing the warmth on her legs. But they were sufficiently warmed and recovered enough from her tiring journey to walk over to Nabiki, stand behind her, and place her hands on Nabiki's shoulders. The older woman sagged under her touch, and Hotaru was surprised; even like this, she hadn't thought anything could get Nabiki down so far. "You're right, you know," she whispered up into Nabiki's ear, clearly and urgently. "We've all been living inside an alien computer system, since the giant monster in Minato destroyed the city and we were all converted into digital information. We are here for reasons we're as yet unsure of, but we have help from within the system, Ranma's personality and memories are missing, and his body has been taken by the enemy. We're working on a way to get everyone out of the system, and the city rebuilt, but we don't know how long we have, nor how exactly to go about it. The only thing we do know for certain is we're being toyed with, delayed, distracted from trying to get everyone out of the system, so we think it's our life force that the Mas... Yoshihiro wants to use."  
  
"Seriously?"  
  
"Yes." Hotaru's single word was firm, full of long years of experience. She could feel Saturn swimming about behind her eyes, lending strength of will to Hotaru. "There is no need to fear. There is no reason to be afraid. Continue living your life as you would normally, Nabiki; don't let the evil bastard win." She stepped back, hearing footsteps coming down the stairs behind her, and she swallowed her power and energy, becoming her normal self again. Nabiki was still frozen in place, staring at the photograph as Hotaru slipped her legs back under the table into warmth again.  
  
"I am sorry about the wait," Kasumi apologised, and gestured at Akane, who looked a little worn out. "I'll go prepare a snack." She left the room.  
  
Nabiki placed the photograph down, traced her fingers over the people in it once more, then turned to Hotaru. Her face still suggested she wasn't quite there, but she smiled faintly at Hotaru - not quite the predator she was, but on the road back perhaps. Hotaru nodded encouragingly at her, and Nabiki left the room. Akane's eyes followed her around as Nabiki headed upstairs.  
  
"Wow, what did you say to her? She hasn't looked too good all day."  
  
"Nothing much," Hotaru shrugged, then leaned forward towards Akane. "Um... this is a really weird question, but do you know any way to contact Ranma? Or to find him? His body or his mind?"  
  
"What's happened?" Akane demanded.  
  
"Ohhhh... nothing. I, uh, sent Kaname on a date with a guy she liked," Hotaru flinched at Akane's groan, and she held her hands up in defence. "I know. I was stupid. Very stupid. But, as Kaname pointed out often enough, she's not Ranma, and I didn't think I should have stood in her way at maybe having a life while she had the chance. So I pushed her into taking it. And she got captured."  
  
"I've seen the news," Akane said drily, clicking the television on via the remote. It played once more the news conference given by GOTT over the capture of one of Ranma Saotome's top lieutenants. "It's all lies, of course. Even a stupid, idiotic pervert like Ranma wouldn't kill people. Not that many, not without a really good reason."  
  
"I agree, and he didn't; we know, we were there," Hotaru reminded Akane. Both fell silent for a moment as they remembered how close to actual death they had come. "But this is so this Agent Sato can continue working against us in public... if people see GOTT members attacking senshi in the streets, or any of the other surviving magical protectors of Japan who came for the monster, they'll think we're terrorists. Control the media, you control an awful lot of minds." Something pricked at Hotaru's mind over that, but she couldn't immediately place it. She shook her head to clear it.  
  
"But to answer your question, the best person to ask would be Cologne."  
  
"Shampoo's great-grandmother."  
  
"Yes. If anyone could find Ranma, through whatever means, it would be her."  
  
Hotaru considered that. Then nodded, and stood. "Thank you, Akane. I'm sorry I can't stay longer. Perhaps... when everything calms down, we can all meet up for lunch."  
  
"That... would be nice, thank you," Akane replied as she helped Hotaru into her coat, and waved the younger girl goodbye, a little unhappily. Kasumi walked back in, with a pair of steaming mugs of soup.  
  
"Oh, has your friend left already?" Kasumi asked. She handed Akane one of the mugs. "I guess I'll have this other mug, then." The two sisters settled in to watch the conference again.  
  
******  
  
Ami and Mitsuki sat two blocks down from the GOTT offices in Yokohama, in a bus shelter. No one else was in the immediate area, and Ami had her laptop open while her and Mitsuki tried to feed themselves hot food. Occasionally, the wind that was gusting from behind the booth would whip around and blow inside. Mitsuki had already lost a small bun that way, and with the money situation being the way it was these days, she wasn't happy about that at all.  
  
"Found anything yet?"  
  
Ami shook her head. "Nothing. The building has one entrance; and even scanning through the system itself, I am not finding any locations that aren't connected to other locations. However, due to the huge number of locations, that doesn't mean a lot at the moment. I would be able to give a better guess as to whether such a location exists once the Mercury computer has run through more than two percent of the system resources." She shut the lid on her laptop, allowing it to run with an audible alarm if it found anything. "Do you really think Yoshihiro would allow us to rescue Kaname?"  
  
"If Ranma's a major threat to Yoshihiro's plans? No. I'm hoping this Sato guy's getting overconfident. I mean, he's beaten me up twice now, and Kaname once. Surely he's forgotten Kaname must have killed him once already." Mitsuki shrugged, hard to determine under her jacket. "But she's like Ranma in lots of ways, whether she realises it or not. She'll keep needling Sato, she'll keep looking for weaknesses, she'll keep looking for that moment she can escape. If she manages to escape, we should try and time our attack to coincide with hers. Maybe that way, we can make Sato terribly overconfident through our attack to overlook whatever it is that Kaname can throw." Mitsuki rocked her head back to stare at the ceiling of the shelter. "I mean, that girl has some seriously evil mojo going on when she gets all mystical."  
  
"I've only your word for that," Ami sighed. "Do you notice no one's reporting Ghosts anymore?"  
  
"Weird subject change," Mitsuki noted. "Why do you say that?"  
  
"Because I just saw one," Ami replied, pointing back north, towards Minato. "A man. Running. Looking over his shoulder at something. Then he just vanished."  
  
"Didn't we think they were bits of random data that got shaved off?"  
  
"Indeed," Ami said, still looking down the road at snowy nothingness. "Yet it's strange that the last ones before just then were seen before this Agent Sato attacked you and Kaname at her apartment. Or the one we saw in the hot springs?"  
  
"Perhaps they never went away," Mitsuki muttered. "Perhaps they're just not newsworthy anymore." Her voice lightened, sounding almost like a young girl's. "Or the controlling hand of the media, this GOTT organisation, wished to stop people from talking about them and so expunged them from the media at all levels. Surely in a system as complex as this, an operator could work out an algorithm to delete any reference in media to Ghosts before it reached the streets or public consumption?"  
  
Ami quirked an eyebrow at Mitsuki's sudden language boost, but simply said, "That could very well be the case." A young girl stepped out of the GOTT offices, and Ami's eyes tracked her as she walked the two blocks down towards them. She was on the opposite side of the road, and gave no indication of being evil. Ami chuckled at herself, at the thought. Of course people didn't have to look evil. Yoshihiro, for example, was simply gorgeous - blond, tall, handsome, capable. And obviously very, very intelligent. That thought, more than anything else about him, made Ami's knees turn to water when she thought of him. Yet, for her, Keitaro Urashima was still the man she'd like to have something with. A pity his relationship with Naru was still on-going; she didn't know if he was still with her because that was what he wanted, what he thought he wanted, or what she wanted... Naru could be domineering.  
  
"Mitsuki," Ami asked, "I've been meaning to ask you for a while, where do you get your medication from? You must have gone through some bottles of the stuff lately, judging by how you swallow those pills."  
  
Mitsuki looked embarrassed, but answered anyway. "There's a small pharmacy just down the road from where we live. I have a lifetime prescription for my... illness, because it won't go away. Ever." She sighed, puffing a breath out between her teeth. "I guess I go through a bottle every week or two at the rate I take them. They're just... not as effective on me as they should be. Got to take lots to get any effect... even the doctors who put me on them for life... they were surprised that I had no response to what would normally be considered high dosages."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Why do you ask?"  
  
"No reason. Killing time, as they say."  
  
"Oh." Then, a minute later, "Look, I've been meaning to ask you for a long time, but... do you dye -" Mitsuki cut her sentence off as Ami touched her leg with a hand. "Ami, uh..."  
  
"Across the road," came the quiet response. Mitsuki turned. The girl who Ami had been following down the road had stopped across from them. She seemed to be the age Hotaru was, and wearing a thick coat, which with a shrug of her shoulders, slid to the ground and revealed a short red minidress with a white cross leading from between her breasts to her crotch.  
  
"Oh, that's just got to be cold," Mitsuki sighed, feeling in her jacket pocket for her transformation wand. "Is it too much to ask that we only fight bad guys on warm, sunny days on tropical beaches? bad guys who just want to laze around on the beach and play evil games of volleyball? No? Hmph."  
  
The girl looked over at them. She couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen, and dressed as she was, she had no makeup on of any kind. However, she didhave lipstick with her. Ami was watched her draw on building walls halfway up the block as she'd walked with it, and now, her coat on the ground, she reached out again and touched the end of the line with her stick of lipstick. She lowered herself into a challenging stance, and grined fiercely at Ami and Mitsuki, who groped for transformation wands in their pockets, readying themselves for the charge.  
  
That never came. Instead, the girl whipped her hand around, and the line of lipstick pulled off the walls down the street, forming a lengthy whip she brought around and swung at the two women. Ami dodged, while Mitsuki tried to parry, the lengths winding around her forearm. With a slight yank, the girl had Mitsuki off her feet and bouncing across the street towards her, her wand skittering from her hand as she bounced.  
  
"Mitsuki!" Ami yelled, transforming into Sailor Mercury while the girl had her attention on the bound woman. "Let her go!" Mercury shouted as she powered up and fired with a "Shabon Spray!" that the girl deflected with her free arm. Mercury gaped for a moment, then shifted gears. "Shabon spray freezing!" Again, nothing, but the girl had wrapped more of the whip around Mitsuki by then, starting to wind it around her neck and cutting off her breathing. Mitsuki strugged with her still-free hand to gain some space under the material, but it seemed unbreakable.  
  
After a moment of futile struggling, she started casting about on the ground randomly as her face turned blue. Mercury refused to panic, but again, didn't quite know what she should do. Usually, she'd have the others around to back her up, ask her for advice, and she could take a backseat role to the events, but here, she found herself cut off from help and in a battle situation she hadn't expected.  
  
Well, this early. She'd been expecting someone from GOTT to come down, but she'd been expecting a security guard or the like, not a super-powered maniac.  
  
The moment of indecisiveness passed, and she took a few steps forward to build up speed, then leapt at the girl, turning her posture to make a flying kick while charging up for another attack. The manoeuvre worked; the girl shifted her attention from Mitsuki to Mercury, just before her kick slammed into the girl's cheek. The GOTT operative brought her arm up to push Mercury away, and cleared Mercury's legs from her gaze just as Mercury let loose with an "Ice crypt!"  
  
Ice ate its way up from the ground over the girl's legs, over her body, and swallowed her whole just as Mercury was completely clear. Mitsuki, her face now purple as she choked for breath, closed her hands on her wand, grunted something through lack of oxygen, and transformed in a burst of purple ribbons. Then she busted free of the wrappings, and rolled over onto her hands and knees, coughing and trying not to vomit as she regained her breath.  
  
"What the HELL was that?" Nemesis asked Mercury.  
  
"Her lipstick, I think. She apparently has some... I would say magical, but I would assume it's more of a hacked ability that allows her to control the constituent molecules of the lipstick material," Mercury theorised as she skipped back to stand behind the stronger senshi. Nemesis climbed painfully to her feet.  
  
"So, you think the bitch is dead?"  
  
"I doubt it would be that easy," Mercury disagreed.  
  
"I'm inclined to believe you," Nemesis muttered, clenching her fists. Even as she spoke, the ice encasing the girl started to crack as she tensed muscles. Finally, with a resounding crack that echoed up the street, the girl busted free, ice falling about her feet.  
  
"Now, that just wasn't nice," she said, wagging a finger at Mercury. "I'd think that a parent such as yourself should be nicer to your children, many times removed as we are."  
  
"'We'?" echoed Mercury quickly.  
  
"A proper lady shouldn't be so quick to anger," a voice above them said. Nemesis kept her eyes on the first girl while Mercury sought out the younger-sounding voice behind and above them. It was a younger girl, with incredibly pale hair, dressed in a blue bodysuit that had no arms or legs. Instead, she wore dainty gloves and shoes, and had her hair tied back except for a single curled bang down the right side of her face. She had a faint smile on her face as she gazed down at the senshi before glancing up at the other girl. "Eclair, I think these two could almost be friends of yours. All they want to do is break things."  
  
The one called Eclair grinned savagely, and bent down again. Nemesis, likewise, prepared for combat, while Mercury questioned the other girl. "Why do you call us parents?"  
  
"Not both of you, just you," the younger girl said.  
  
"Lumiere, I'm getting bored," Eclair said.  
  
Nemesis growled. "Do you need your little friend to hold your hand?"  
  
Eclair's eyebrows shot up in surprise, then lowered again as her eyes slitted in anger. "I'll enjoy taking your tongue," she growled back.  
  
"Just me?" queried Mercury. Lumiere nodded in silent affirmation. So, Mercury thought, it had to be something to do with Mercury... although what on Earth could have joined forces with the Dark Kingdom so readily?  
  
"Don't you feel lucky," Nemesis grunted in her direction.  
  
"She should feel special," Eclair smirked at Nemesis. "Once I'm finished with you, I'll personally make sure she pays for the blood on her hands." Then, without further warning, she leapt at Nemesis.  
  
The elder senshi blocked with both forearms as she'd been taught for high-strength attacks, but felt the impact push her back through the road surface. She braced herself in the street, then allowed Eclair's next attack to batter itself on her defence before she dropped and, leaning forward, wrapped her thighs around Eclair's neck and tossed her into a building. Eclair jumped up, apparently none the worse for wear, and brushed herself off. Nemesis likewise continued her movement until she stood once more, and posed dramatically, intentionally provoking Eclair's charge. She stepped to one side, but failed to catch the follow-up attack as Eclair planted a foot deep into the road and swung the other around in a high arc. It smacked Nemesis in the jaw, and she flew thirty metres into a glass display window, disappearing into the store beyond.  
  
"Again with the jaw," Mercury heard Nemesis mutter as she stood back up and climbed back through the window. An alarm started in the shop, hesitantly at first, but then it built up into a piercing shriek.  
  
"Do you feel left out of this, 'Mother'?" Lumiere asked Mercury, who shifted her attention back to the younger of the two girls.  
  
"A little," Mercury admitted, readying herself into a combat stance again. Yet the girl seemed positively amused by the gesture, and tittered self-consciously behind one of her hands before she began pulling her gloves off, finger by finger.  
  
"Please allow me the credit of not wishing to sully myself physically," Lumiere smiled. Her gloves off and tucked into a belt, she gestured dramatically with her fingers, and Mercury caught sight of lances of multicoloured light streaming from her fingertips. She lowered her visor into position over her eyes and ran an analysis, just as the first lance reached her and punched a hole through her standard system defences. Alerts flashed up before her eyes, window boxes opening and covering other penetration alerts as the lance dug deep within the code of the embedded Mercury computer. Mercury cursed silently to herself, and began furiously concentrating on the datascape that revolved throughout her head.  
  
She caught sight of the young girl, a visual representation within the system, as a second lance struck home. The first was obviously a tracker, hunting down and penetrating passive and active defences to allow for the second lance, the payload: a personality-laden virus with enough computing power to rewrite entire polydimensional operating systems to the infector's specifications. Which, obviously for the amount of effort involved, didn't leave Mercury with a lot of hope for a positive outcome. She began to focus, calling up defence structures to slow the first probe while she considered methods for stopping it altogether before it reached the security core of the polyframe. The standard defences weren't slowing the probe much, and the girl - the second probe - just walked slowly but surely through the path tore by the first. She couldn't affect the system in those areas, and considered them already corrupt sectors.  
  
At most, Mercury could really only call for a system format and hope for the best, but these virii showed intelligence; they could likely hide from the wiping procedure, and would then shut down (or do worse to) the operating system. Thus, she gave those corrupted sectors as lost for the moment, and focussed on a method of shutting down the probes. What was confusing her was that all of the strongest system defences that the Mercury computer was capable of manifesting were like hot butter to a rocket launcher to the penetrating probe; even as she tore through operating manuals faster than a human brain could comprehend them, and pulling out appropriate sections of defensive code, the probe was decimating her defences. Something was wrong here.  
  
A Dark Kingdom virus shouldn't have been able to work like this. And while Mercury was having questions about the Agents roaming the system, and knowing that the system itself was likely a Mercury computer, she doubted Yoshihiro had anything that could have... Mercury swore to herself, and pulled out a volume of data she'd just been trawling through for code, flipping through the virtual pages. The second probe stopped, and looked at her, curiously.  
  
"What have you found over there?" she asked.  
  
Mercury slammed the book shut, and looked up, in horror. "I know what you are," she gasped.  
  
"I'm fast losing hope for your intelligence," Lumiere remarked.  
  
******  
  
"So, Usagi, what bright idea do you have to get us into there?" Rei asked, for the tenth time. Usagi was still thinking, and thinking hard by the look of her. Eyes closed, face screwed up in a scowl, blood rushing her her face - if she didn't breathe soon, Rei could go home and put her feet up; Usagi'd be dead.  
  
Eventually, though, she inhaled, and started walking triumphantly towards the fence. "Luna's gone missing," she announced to the world. "And we saw her run in here. That's our story, if anyone asks." And then Usagi, without thought to the consequences, ducked under the fence surrounding the Zone and disappeared.  
  
Rei glanced at Minako, who shrugged. "You know how she gets sometimes. And, as it goes, it's a decent enough excuse we should be able to use without getting into much trouble."  
  
"I don't think the Self-Defence Forces are guarding the entry points because it's unsafe," Makoto grumbled.  
  
"That's why we're here," Rei answered with a sigh. "If it wasn't dangerous, you know all the other defenders of the world would be in there, poking around." Without another word, Rei followed Usagi in. Minako shrugged at Makoto, who sighed, shook her head in disbelief, and followed the others in.  
  
The Zone, where Tokyo had been destroyed by the rampaging giant monster that had come ashore at Minato, and rampaged through to the tower, was a ruin. Still. Although much of the heavier debris had been moved, there still jutted foundations from destroyed buildings, that poked up fingers of reinforced steel and chunks of concrete towards the skies. Jagged shards of glass rose from the bulldozed dirt, pushed to the sides of the many little roadways that now snaked between the larger piles of rubbish. Some pieces of buildings still stood recognisable above the ground, casting strange, incomplete shadows over the girls. Usagi had continued on, but from behind, her neck seemed abnormally pale. She was walking slowly, too, cautiously.  
  
Rei caught up, and started looking around. Makoto brought up the rear, while Minako ranged ahead a little. All were silent, and no one seemed to want to break the unearthly silence, broken only by the distant sounds of heavy vehicles in front of them.  
  
Eventually, Usagi shivered, and hugged herself. "I wish Mamoru were here," she commented quietly.  
  
Rei agreed; partially psychic, she could feel the evidence of human life here on more than a visual level. She gasped as she felt something shiver through her, like a scream of fright, of pain, suddenly cut short. She herself wished Phobos and Deimos, the two crows who had joined her on occasion at the Hino Shrine throughout her life. They usually made her feel more safe. Failing that, Tuxedo Kamen would also be an appropriate guardian. But, all she responded with was a murmured, "Yeah," as she continued on.  
  
"Does anyone see anything?" Makoto asked. She wasn't as sensitive as the others; or at least, that's how she seemed. She often dealt with things in private, away from others, tending to want to appear strong for her friends. Whether or not the sights around them affected her didn't show in any way. "Apart from... you know... the bodies back there."  
  
"There were bodies?" Usagi asked, then instantly regretted it. She knew now that, morbidly, she'd be looking for them on the way back, and knew she'd be creeped out for the next few days. "I hope you're joking, Makoto."  
  
Makoto went to deny that, then decided for Usagi's peace of mind, she'd best just nod her head absently as she continued her visual search. "But there's nothing here but junk," she said, eventually.  
  
"Of course," Minako said from further ahead. "Because what we're looking for is over there." And she pointed.  
  
The others reached her, and looked out. The ground here had been hollowed out a little. It sank down three dozen metres from where the girls stood, which gave them a good view over the site. Piping had been laid out; obsidian tubes stretching around the exterior of the hollow. Construction vehicles a kilometre away were laying another into position; monsters directed the crane's lowering of the pipe into place, then backed the crane off and began welding it to the rest of them. Out further into the middle of the depression, huge foundations lay, with giant steel columns reaching skyward. It seemed almost to be a gigantic hand, reaching forth from the ground, a giant grasping for rebirth from the womb of earth that had sealed over it.  
  
For a fleeting moment, Usagi had a vision of a giant monster bursting forth and the senshi being eaten. She shook her head, and the thought vanished from before her eyes, but continued lurking just behind the scenes.  
  
Other pieces of construction seemed weird. Rectangular concrete tunnels, as if they were laying a subway system or underground busway, stretched from the centre of the depression out to the edges. Other columns rose here and there, seemingly at random, with what looked like weird technorganic patterning up and down their surfaces. Occasionally, a burst of dark energy crackled from a contact on one or another.  
  
"I thought... they were rebuilding Tokyo in here," Usagi said, eventually.  
  
"That's stating the obvious," Rei remarked.  
  
"Didn't you have some idea they'd be doing something evil in here when you said we were coming into the Zone to check what was going on?" Makoto reminded Usagi.  
  
"I... I just thought... this would be a good place for the Dark Kingdom to hide something... but... people work here... where are the people?" Usagi's eyes shot around the giant hollow, eyes seeking out anything approaching a normal human, but finding nothing. Rei's hand closed on her shoulder in support, and Usagi was grateful for the gesture, knowing without looking that the other senshi were also growing as uneasy with the location as she was. "There should be people," she repeated, dumbly.  
  
"They haven't cleaned any of this up," Makoto noted suddenly. "There's nothing here that's... everything, it's all just been shoved to the side. Those -" Makoto caught herself before she uttered 'bodies' again, having seen Usagi was more on edge now than she had been a few minutes ago, and substituted, "- remains of the buildings, they've all just been bulldozed out of the way here to make this..."  
  
"I wish Ami were here. She could tell us what we want to know," Minako said, her voice hollow as her eyes locked on a troup of monsters heading for a ramp half a kilometre away. "And I think we'd better get under cover... they're too close."  
  
Usagi agreed, and the senshi melted back against the enormous mounds of rubble, peeking out around the edge to see where the monsters were going.  
  
They tromped up the ramp, slowly, weighed down as if by massive lead weights. They trudged towards a small set of buildings the senshi hadn't noticed before, and a young, attractive woman stood near a timecard machine just out from the building. As the monsters reached the machine, they took their card, and swiped it through the small digital device. As soon as their card had gone through, the senshi were amazed to watch green alphanumerics explode from the skin of the worker, and rush up into the sky until they could no longer be seen. As the data left the body, the monster slumped, seemed to deflate as its skin shrank into a more human appearance. By the last time the last ideogram jumped forth from the body, the monster, the worker, was human once more, and an exhausted one at that. He then trudged into the small buildings, ostensibly to shower off the dirt and grime they were covered in.  
  
"That answers that question," Makoto said, decidedly off-colour.  
  
"Temporary monsters," Rei murmured. "That's... sickening..."  
  
Minako agreed in a slightly more physical affirmation, nearly right across her shoes. Thankfully, she managed to control the retching quickly, and the girls started to move back the way they had come. All were silent until they reached the fence.  
  
"We've seen things like that before, and... and..." Makoto shook her head. "Why is this affecting us so?"  
  
"Because he's up to something," Rei replied. "Yoshihiro is working on something huge, and we can't stop him. Him, or his people who work for him here. I know Mitsuki is unstable, but one thing she's good at is fighting, and if she got thrown around as much as she says, both times she's faced these GOTT agents, then... I shudder to think what else Yoshihiro has working for him here."  
  
"Rei's right," Usagi said, quietly, from beside Minako. "That's... what we saw in there... it looks unstoppable. But it can't be. We've got to find some way of stopping it, stopping that... rape of people we saw in there. I don't think anyone knows it. I don't think... I can't think that. We're all being used, and used to make that thing," she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, back into the Zone, "and then... then..."  
  
"... to power it?" Minako asked in a small voice.  
  
Usagi nodded warily. "I think so. So that just makes it all the more important that we find a way to stop it."  
  
"We'd better rescue Kaname, then."  
  
"That, Mako-chan, or find some way of doing it ourselves."  
  
******  
  
Nemesis dodged another punch that cratered the road, Eclair's head snapping back as she jumped upwards to escape the GOTT agent's uncontrolled lunge. Eclair didn't seem to be as ladylike as the other girl, Nemesis reflected as the brunette gritted her teeth in anger and leapt upwards, following her. Whereas Lumiere stood off and apparently conducted an invisible orchestra at Mercury, while the senshi of the Innermost planet of the Moon Kingdom moaned, thrashed and whimpered like she had just discovered her own sexuality before her. Weird. Nemesis glanced back at Eclair, to see that the girl had leapt up higher, faster, and was now descending from the weak winter's sun, hands joined in a fist, up behind her head. At the moment Nemesis caught sight of the danger, Eclair's fists whipped up and over her head, crashing down towards where Nemesis' head would have been. Instead, the senshi raised both arms in an X-shape, catching the blow. She felt she'd have bruises for a few minutes where the iron-like fists smashed into her forearms.  
  
"Don't you two have something better to be doing?" Nemesis asked as she turned her downward momentum into a spinning kick as she touched the ground. Eclair parried the kick, and stepped inside Nemesis' reach, bringing an elbow around to bury into her throat. Nemesis bent backwards onto her hands, flicking her legs up around Eclair rapidly and bringing them down to stand upright again away from the ES-agent before Eclair could make another attack. "Like, I don't know, harrassing your boss for better-fitting uniforms?"  
  
"You can talk," Eclair shot back, hair whipping around as she spun and delivered a kick of her own. Nemesis caught the offered foot, and twisted it sharply, Eclair jumping and rolling to avoid having her leg injured before managing to pull it out of the senshi's grasp. "That miniskirt is so out of fashion. And those boots... do you troll for men in them?"  
  
Nemesis grunted as another punch made it through her defences. "At least I'm old enough to go hunting men," she retorted, "unlike SOME super-powered people present." She returned the punch with one of her own, then followed up with a feint to one side before bringing her right foot up and burying her toe in Eclair's thigh. She felt the muscle under it bulge appropriately as she dug the tip of her boot in, then felt something give. Eclair gasped, and jumped back twice to gain some room. Nemesis, injured but not seriously so, refused to allow the ES-agent to find time to recuperate, and jumped towards her. "Richter wave!" she yelled, gesturing gravitons down her hands and into the injured girl, who felt gravity double, triple, quadruple around her in cresting shockwaves. Air grew solid and sluggish and she struggled to draw a breath. Before she could, Nemesis' foot crushed her stomach, pushing what remaining oxygen she had in her lungs out in a hard gush of breath, and she was thrown backwards into a wall.  
  
Nemesis continued after her, firing off attack after attack, pushing the younger woman deeper and deeper into the ground, her bloodied body crumpling under massed gravities. An eyeball popped under the pressure, the other bulging dramatically. Skullbone cracked, then fractured along a hemisphere, then splintered, driving particles of bone throughout the soft brain tissue, itself being pulped under the intense graviton bursts.  
  
And then, Nemesis sagged. Drained. She let the gravitons go, felt them reassociate themselves with the planet she'd drawn them from. From around her, there was a general quiet creak as buildings settled back into their positions with their normal weight. But before she helped Mercury with Lumiere, she needed to get her breath back. Her hands on her knees, she drew in breath after breath. She hadn't expended most of her power, or even half; but that fight had been more drawn out, more intensive, than most she'd fought in the last year, and before she went back into battle, she needed to know she could operate at peak efficiency. Somewhere inside her, Shin was affecting judgement with this decision. The memory that told her what could happen if she wasn't calm and controlled. Even Kari respected that decision; as much as Kari enjoyed letting loose, unleashing her anger and rage on others, she had no wish to self-destruct. Nor, apparently, to let Mitsuki self-destruct. And anyway, in this form, Nemesis reigned supreme; the big shark overseeing the little fishes. To the power of a planetary guardian memeconstruct, differing personalities were nothing but motes of dust in one's eye.  
  
It took her maybe twenty seconds to feel capable of fighting again at peak efficiency. Mercury seemed to be holding her own, with a few muttered curses and seductive-sounding moans, so Nemesis turned to help out. But as she turned, she caught sight of something, and turned back to the crater that held Eclair's corpse.  
  
The corpse twitched.  
  
Nemesis blinked, and assumed it was wind, an earthquake, nerves, even waves of power being flung off from the fight behind her. But no, one of the limbs moved.  
  
Jerkily at first, like a puppet being moved by a puppeteer who's forgotten his trade, but gaining in strength and purpose. An arm reached up, chunks of bloodied meat hanging from the bones, and the hand planted down, fingers splayed to anchor the hand as it pushed down. The body levered partway up, cracked evil smile peering from between broken teeth. Nemesis took a step back as the corpse sat fully up. Then, carefully, it stood upright, pulling itself out of the hole in the ground where it had been forced. To Nemesis' eye, it looked as if the flesh was pulling back together. Certainly, on her left calf, veins were braiding theselves around the muscle, and her skull was reknitting even as her eye reinflated.  
  
"I... I..." Nemesis stuttered, taking another step backwards.  
  
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Eclair grinned savagely. "I'm not finished with you yet." She started towards Nemesis again, who momentarily panicked and swung a savage roundhouse with all her strength at Eclair, a punch that by all rights should have taken her head off. But Eclair's head snapped around, far beyond the limits of a normal person's neck, and Eclair paused, then twisted her head back around to face the senshi. "Oh please. Haven't you figured it out yet, little defender of the nether regions of the solar system? You're not powerful enough to beat me. You weren't powerful enough to beat our father, either. You're about thirty thousand years too early to beat me." Then, physically whole again, a stunning vision of beauty, Eclair launched a vicious attack on Nemesis.  
  
Meanwhile, Mercury's defences continued to fall. There had to be something in the history files about defeating Cybrids, but she couldn't find anything. All that came up in her rapid searches were slight references to their creation, to their rebellion, to their betrayal during the war against Beryl, and... something that was referred to several times by name, but with no attached description, as if the reader should know all about it. Prometheus. She felt there was something there, some importance she was missing, but she couldn't find any descriptive reference to Prometheus, which hindered her search. Perhaps Prometheus had been the codename of the viral pattern that was suspected to have infected the Cybrids on Mercury, or perhaps Prometheus had been a Cybrid General, or soldier of renown. Lumiere's viral probe continued to smirk that oh-so irritating superior faint smile from above Mercury as she worked feverishly, only one hand directing defence systems and building walls while she continued her studying.  
  
"You can't win," Lumiere said finally. "No matter what you do. Perhaps the original guardian essence from Mercury might have bested me in a challenge of datascapes; unfortunately, you are but a pale shadow, a poor imitation of the real thing. We beat them, too."  
  
"Beryl beat our original selves," Mercury threw back. "And that was only because we, the guardians of the solar system, weren't there to fight her in that last battle."  
  
"Is that what you tell yourselves?" Lumiere taunted. "The Moon Kingdom was doomed; dimensional stability was collapsing. The civilisation of the White Moon and attendant planets was about to collapse into a gravity well and destroy the primary plane; instead, Serenity chose to destroy all she held, in order to grab it all again through her daughter in the future. She didn't count on the Dark Kingdom surviving her little trick - by all rights, the dimensional stability of the Kingdom's scattered holdings should have been corrupted beyond access, but many of the smaller outlying dominions of Metallia's continued to exist out of phase with primary plane or either of the major Kingdoms... which allowed Beryl and her descendant forces the necessary physical locations to mobilise from."  
  
"You are very talkative for a viral probe," Mercury muttered, opening yet another history tome. She flicked through several hundred pages before looking up in surprise, then discarding the book before searching the shelves for files on mechanical engineering.  
  
"What are you doing?" Lumiere asked, suddenly curious.  
  
"Finding a method of stopping you," Mercury replied, fingers alighting on a slim book, Cybertechnological Hybrids And Their Practical Applications. She pulled that out, and rapidly flipped through the pages, while Lumiere spread her fingers, and gestured faster. Viral application began expanding through random memory locations, and the datascape exploded into small red flowers of alarm and corrupted data fields. Several of the books on the shelves behind Mercury exploded into flame; one turned into a giant roaring cockroach before it exploded. Mercury was oblivious to everything. With one hand, she continued to resist the infection of her computer systems; with her other, she studied the book rapidly.  
  
Outside, Nemesis' head was snapped back painfully by a powerful kick, but she retained sufficient presence of mind to bring a fist up, charged with local gravitons, and buried it into Eclair's crotch. The girl cried out, then flipped back, staggering a little. But even as Nemesis regained her breath and lightly touched her jaw, fingering the bruise that was rising under the skin already, she watched Eclair standing further upright, before dropping once more into a launch pose.  
  
Sure enough, within fractions of a second, Eclair had thrown herself at Nemesis again. Nemesis brought up her forearms, warding off the initial blows, but one slipped through and hammered her in the stomach. She folded up, and slumped to the ground. Eclair stood above her, ready to deal the final blow to the senshi, but smiling savagely, savouring the moment.  
  
Then Lumiere said, "What are you -" and broke off into screeches that sounded to Nemesis awfully like a modem negotiating with a host. But she couldn't open her eyes to see what Mercury had done. She tried to push herself up, tensing muscles to hopefully ameliorate the coming blow -  
  
- that never fell. She looked up, just in time to see Eclair fall backwards. As she hit the ground, she exploded into a million pixels that faded within moments. Lumiere, over by Mercury, a stunned expression on her face, slumped to her knees before the jarring impact with the road's surface caused her form to explode similarly.  
  
In pain, Nemesis dragged herself to her feet with a handy nearby bus seat, while Mercury's colour recovered from the pale white it had been when her fight had finished. Nemesis knew she'd had something to do with the deaths of these two but she didn't know. She guessed Mercury had done something computer-y to them. Eventually, the Mercurian senshi made her way over to Nemesis, who was slumped against the iron-wrought seat, and sank down onto it. "What did you do?" Nemesis asked.  
  
"I found the construction manuals for them," Mercury replied, after a time. "I found out how we made them, what they were used for - and every backdoor entrance Mercurian engineers had built into the omniware that drove them."  
  
"'Them'?"  
  
"Cybrids. Made on Mercury before the war, but they rebelled, left Mercury, joined up with Beryl's forces as they laid waste to the Moon Kingdom," Mercury explained. "Under the leadership of Prometheus, their primary node. He was never found; and the Cybrids were presumed all destroyed before the last days of the war." Mercury shrugged. "I guess there are more out there; that they just went into hiding."  
  
"And you switched them off just like that? Impressive."  
  
Mercury opened her mouth to explain that no, it wasn't that easy, that in the time she'd been fighting in the datascape of her Mercury computer, in that interminable time on an altered plane of reality when she'd found the data she needed through to actually managing to ram a reciprocal trojan virus with a destructive payload, she had had her mind turned inside out, that her memories were all jumbled and only now coming back into focus, that for a time, she hadn't been able to move, until the nanotechnological symbiotes that enhanced her biophysical system and gave her the strength of a senshi had rebooted her body and started everything up again. She'd not been able to breathe, had felt the blood grow stangnant in her veins, actually saw neuro-electrical impulses sputter and die before the eternal technology within her body remade her. But no; she thought otherwise. Nemesis looked beat, and Ami, not having been knocked around physically, was - apart from her brain, which was being nicely ordered by legions of nanites - mostly fine. She closed her mouth, hearing sirens in the distance.  
  
Nemesis slid down the back of the chair next to her, and both took some deep breaths while they tried to recover enough to continue. They'd only need rest a few minutes...  
  
******  
  
The Nekohanten was quiet, dark. No lights appeared to be on inside, and with the cloud cover above, that made the inside of the restaurant look darker than it should have. Hotaru paused outside the front door, hesitating only a moment, before pushing the door open and entering.  
  
"Go!" barked a voice from deep inside. "Restaurant is closed today," it continued, slightly quieter.  
  
"I'm looking for Cologne," Hotaru spoke up.  
  
"And why would you be looking for me, child?" The speaker hopped into the light, and Hotaru saw it was the old woman she had come looking for. "Well?"  
  
"I need to find Ranma," she said.  
  
"You're one of those moon girls son-in-law has hooked up with," Cologne confirmed, no doubt in her voice.  
  
"Uh... 'moon girls'?"  
  
"I'm not stupid, child, nor am I blind. The power you and your friends produce cannot be hidden from one who can see beyond the flesh." Cologne gestured at Hotaru with a boney finger. "But, I have to say, I was fooled at first, seeing your friends at the Tendo's. I did not look carefully enough. It was a mistake that I will rectify." She hopped off her cane, and swung it around into a kendo ready-position, eyeing Hotaru up.  
  
"We don't have to fight -"  
  
"History says we must," Cologne uttered, then leapt at Hotaru, cane out in front of her as if she wished to run the girl through. Hotaru, caught out, tried to sidestep and brought up her hands to defend herself. The wood of the cane bit through her palms as it passed, and she caught sight of hate-filled eyes as they flashed past her. Cologne bounced off a far wall, and returned, spinning around so the cane acted much as a propellor blade. Again, as she passed, Hotaru felt a stinging cut slice through her skin, and she concentrated, pulling the flesh together and healing herself. Then, taking another ready position, she waited for Cologne's next attack.  
  
It wasn't long in coming, and Hotaru felt more slices, more pin pricks, as the elderly woman rocketed past.  
  
Cologne stopped on a nearby table, gloating. "I don't know why I was so afraid of you," she said with a smile. "It's so obvious that the power you have is useless. And physically, you're weak. So weak, I don't think it worth fighting you any longer." She folded her arms across her chest, and lifted her nose to show the contempt she felt for Hotaru. Hotaru, on the other hand, felt a flush of anger through her. She healed herself again, then lifted a hand up in the air.  
  
"Saturn planet power - make up!"  
  
Now Cologne's eyes opened again, in surprise. "My, aren't we getting cocky."  
  
"I didn't come here to fight," Saturn said. "I came here to find someone very dear to me. You had been recommended to me as the person to see about finding Ranma. And by god, I will make you find him for me."  
  
Cologne darted forward, and Saturn, with her enhanced speed and strength, slammed her glaive down between her legs. It buried the shaft in the floor, but Cologne somehow shifted sideways and slid through untouched, slicing at one of Saturn's boots. The purple leather parted, and Saturn flicked an annoyed kick backwards. Cologne dodged that, and leaped up, intending to attack Saturn's face while she was overbalanced, but she wasn't counting on Saturn being an expert with her glaive.  
  
Swinging it around behind her and up, Saturn caught Cologne with a lucky shot and swatted her towards one of the walls. The elderly Amazon stopped her flight and growled.  
  
"I'm not the only one who should be trying to be less arrogant, it seems," Saturn noted with a smile. "I still do not want to fight, though. I merely -"  
  
"Why would I help you?" Cologne asked suddenly. "Ranma is betrothed to my great-granddaughter; why would I help one who claims her attachment to my future son-in-law takes precedence over Amazon law?"  
  
For that, Saturn didn't have an immediate answer. She thought, and then said, "Because I love him, and your granddaughter doesn't, perhaps? Because whatever argument you have with me and my fellow senshi, whatever this twisted history you follow tells you about us, I care about my boyfriend, and I want him back." The last words were spoken in a voice that only the very stupid would ignore, only the incredibly ignorant would disobey.  
  
Yet Cologne was neither. She was strong, she was skilled, and she knew it. Likewise, she had already seen the new training over old patterning of the fighting style this Sailor Saturn used, and had picked it as a bastardised Anything-Goes style within Hotaru's opening stance. Ranma had apparently been teaching an abbreviated version of his own teachings so as to not put others through what he himself had been through. She knew that Saturn posed no real threat to her in a fight.  
  
"If you cannot give me a reason, I cannot help you," she said simply, and turned her back on the senshi. She felt rather than saw the young girl step forward once, twice, reach a hand out - at first agressively, then, after a pause, imploringly.  
  
"Help me, Cologne, you're my only hope."  
  
"I have already given you my answer, child," Cologne replied. "Do as I say and I will do as you ask."  
  
With no idea in her head still, Saturn let her transformation drop, and Hotaru left the restaurant, depressed. Cologne watched her go from one of the upstairs windows, trudging down the street. Strange, Cologne reflected, that two women, such as her below, had devastated the entire Amazon society over a thousand years ago... but having seen this one, the child who had devastated the local high school, she had to wonder... just how had they posed any kind of threat?  
  
******  
  
It took ten minutes for the first of the emergency vehicles to reach the destruction that was once a street, and Nemesis and Mercury looked up from their bus seat as ambulance workers threw themselves into digging through the rubble. Wearily, Nemesis called out, "There's no bodies. No one was here apart from us."  
  
One of the workers shot her a nervous, almost frightened look, and turned away. Moments later, as the first of the police cars pulled up, Mercury grew nervous. Armed response teams, in trucks, hopping out with automatic rifles as well as smaller stubby sub-machineguns. "Uh, Nemesis...?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"We'd best leave."  
  
"Why?" Nemesis asked, before the first of the police began firing in their direction. A bullet spanged off the road surface in front of them. "Oooooh..." More bullets followed, and Nemesis held her hands up. "Why are you shooting at *us*? The bad guys are up there!" She pointed up the block behind them, at the GOTT offices. Mercury clapped a gloved hand to her face to hide a grimace.  
  
"Sailor Nemesis?" she asked. "They think we're the bad guys? That we did all this?"  
  
Nemesis turned back to her. "But we *did* do all of.... oh." Realisation dawned, and her face clouded. "So, we need to get moving again?"  
  
"Yes." A bullet caught Mercury's shoulder, the shot catching her uniform and bouncing off, but the impact spinning her half-around regardless as she gave a brief shout of pain. "And quickly."  
  
"Bah, let me take care of this," Nemesis growled, turning back to the police. She raised her hands, and gestured at the officers. "Richter wave!" Gravities multiplied around the officers, knocking them off their feet and into invisible gravity shelves. Within seconds, not an officer remained on their feet. Mercury's eyes were wide open.  
  
"How could you -"  
  
"They're all alive," Nemesis said with a now-bored shrug. "More's the pity. Come on, then." They turned and jogged up the street towards the GOTT building, Mercury shooting glances back every few steps to make sure the officers were indeed climbing to their feet. They looked dazed and confused, and used their partly-crumpled cars to hold themselves up.  
  
"Did you have to do that?" she demanded.  
  
Nemesis shrugged. "It was non-lethal. We thought it was appropriate, since they were trying to be lethal and failing miserably." She gestured backwards with a jerk of her head. "I mean, you can go back and apologise or something, but we stand by our decision."  
  
Mercury noted the implication, and kept running, deciding that whomever was in the driver's seat at the time might have had a point. Regardless, she hadn't the time to make further comment, as they had crossed the final stretch of road to stand before the GOTT offices.  
  
"So, Kaname's in here somewhere?"  
  
"Most likely not, but there should be some clue as to where Kaname could be found in the system," Mercury asserted, sounding more confident than she felt. In fact, she felt some trepidation, and not because of the previous fight. Indeed, after having defeated the two Cybrids, she felt somewhat more confident of her abilities, and that of what she had once been. What the senshi were was the best of what the Moon Kingdom had had to offer, the best abilities, the most intelligence, the greatest strength, the deepest compassion. Somehow, Mercury had often felt less appreciated, whether she had mentioned it or not. She seemed to be the unsung member of the team, and her brain, what she considered to be her best asset, was often forced to become secondary to her physical abilities. She had enjoyed the chance to show off what she could do, if even only a little, to one of her companions. "There has to be an address somewhere for Kaname's position, even if she can't be reached through normal travel means. Possibly, we'll need to utilise some kind of magic... or what will seem like magic... to get there."  
  
"Unless we can find, like, a train or something?" Nemesis asked wryly, before looking up at the building before them. "They sure built this thing fast. What, it's been nine weeks since this all started? And this thing..." She gestured aimlessly up at the huge concrete facade, looming above them. "So, how do we do this?"  
  
Mercury looked up as well, before lowering her gaze to the doors ahead of them. "Agent Sato will know we're coming by now. And he has to know that we've beaten his pets. If he doesn't, there's something wrong. If he doesn't want us to have Kaname, we won't get through to her. If he does, it might be hard on us, but we will leave with her. One way or another, I want to make sure he wants us to have her with us when we leave."  
  
Nemesis nodded. "So, hard and fast through the front doors?"  
  
Mercury nodded likewise. "Yes. At this point, one of two outcomes will be forthcoming. One, we find that Sato doesn't want us to have Kaname. Two, we find he does."  
  
"Worry about that when it comes to it," Nemesis muttered, before striding to the doors, and whipping them open to find -  
  
- nothing. The lobby was empty. Concrete pillars ran in lines near the walls, along the length of the lobby, stretching back to a series of elevator doors. Just before the senshi was a security booth, a bored-looking security guard reading a newspaper. He had a radio switched on in the booth with him, and wasn't paying attention to anything. Nemesis glanced back at Mercury, who had joined her, then walked towards the booth, raised a knuckle, and rapped on the safety glass. "Excuse me."  
  
The guard looked up, and his mouth fell open in surprise, then his eyes grew wide in horror.  
  
"My friend and I are looking for another friend. She's about so tall," Nemesis held a hand up at just above shoulder-height, "and she's got this gorgeous copper hair we all adore, and, oh, she's racked. You know, like this," appropriate hand gestures were made as the guard fumbled for a microphone on the desk before him. "And, well, she kinda got misplaced and we want her back. Oh, don't do that," Nemesis chidded gently, smashing the glass open with barely a punch and twisting the microphone so it snapped at its base. "That's not friendly at all. Look; we've got her tags and everything." The guard, already scared, looked down at Nemesis' fist, a brief moment before she brought it up and smashed it into his face. He toppled to the floor, senseless. "Damn. I was hoping he'd make it a little more interesting."  
  
"Your sense of humour often leaves me wondering," Mercury said as she walked by, through the security checkpoint. Nemesis cocked an eyebrow in reply.  
  
"I'm funny?"  
  
"Sometimes," came the reply.  
  
"Wow. I never knew," Nemesis muttered, almost to herself, just loud enough for Mercury to hear. "What have I been doing with my life? I'm going to go to Tokyo and become a comedian!" She sighed, theatrically.  
  
Mercury shook her head. "You watch overly too much television." The elevators at the end of the lobby dinged, and the doors opened, as the two senshi strode towards them. As the doors parted, both women saw half a dozen security guards in high-end riot gear, coming out bent low, weapons at the ready. The senshi stopped, then looked at each other for a moment before diving in opposite directions behind the concrete supports. Two tear gas cylinders bounced past, spitting out a cloud of acrid vapour that made Nemesis' eyes water. She noticed Mercury's visor had come down, protecting her eyes, but not her throat, from the gas attack, even as bullets began chipping at the edges of the huge pillars, sending chunks of concrete flying through the room, making it even more confused. Mercury dipped from behind her column, diving into the shadow of the next one closest to the elevators. Nemesis shrugged as best as she could with the burning in her eyes, stepped from behind the pillar into the line of sight of the guards, and began running.  
  
Time seemed to slow down, and Nemesis swore she could see the air explode in front of each individual bullet as she sprinted, ballooning out around it and then collapsing into the minute vacuum left by the path of the bullet. Dozens of these paths lined the room, and she felt several bullets impact across her right shoulder; thankfully, the impact was absorbed by her uniform, and beyond that, her hardened skin and layer of compact muscle beneath. She thanked whatever deities the Moon Kingdom had originally prayed to for the construction of the senshi, and charged on. Several of the guards nearest her realised she wasn't falling down, and that she was indeed getting faster, and then that the other one was taking advantage of the fact her compatriot was distracting them and moving closer to the elevators.  
  
Then Nemesis was among them, fists blurring, feet smashing, guards flying. She didn't make any killing blows, but plenty of disabling ones, economical attacks that knocked guards unconscious with minimum of effort, injury, and time to bring new attacks to the other guards present. Within a very short order, Nemesis stood among the bodies of the fallen, panting slightly, a crazed look in one eye. Then she shrugged, shuddered a little, and smoothed back her suddenly-wild hair as she regained control of herself. She gestured at the elevator doors. "Your turn, I believe," she said, and leaned up against one of the surviving pillars while she watched a slightly-disbelieving Mercury shoot her a glare, and press the button for the lift. They waited two minutes, then the lift dinged, and the doors opened. There was no one inside, and the two senshi entered warily, while Mercury, with her visor still down over her eyes, hacked into the building's operating network and brought up a list of floors and offices.  
  
"I think what we want is below ground," she said eventually.  
  
"What makes you think that?" Nemesis asked.  
  
"Underground is a good place to hide things," Mercury replied, "especially prisons, when they have no corresponding location in the physical world."  
  
"But this isn't the physical world," Nemesis reminded Mercury.  
  
"Ah," Mercury smiled, "but the same rules apply here that did in our world. Haven't you noticed? This city could have been built to have giant robots, service droids, monorails, so many things that we would consider fiction or unrealistic, and we could have had our minds altered to adapt to these visuals... yet everything is reliant on electricity to run, the laws of physics remain the same, the buildings are as they were in Tokyo, even these GOTT offices are laid out much as a government building would be in real life. They are conforming to our images; and buildings in the real world always have secret basements rather than floors above the top of the building."  
  
Nemesis thought about it, then shrugged. "Well, it makes more sense than anything else," she agreed. "So... how do we go about going below ground, seeing as this lift has this floor as its lowest?"  
  
In reply, Mercury fingered the side of her visor, linking the Mercury system contained within into the building's internal network once more, and took control of the elevator car. She lowered it down the shaft, further and further, until finally, the elevator car stopped with a ding. The doors slid open.  
  
Again, there was nothing but a long corridor, white, with a series of vomit-green doors lining the walls every few metres. Mercury and Nemesis stepped from the relative safety of the elevator, into the corridor, and the doors closed behind them. Nemesis jumped as the doors clicked together and the elevator hummed as the car rose from the basement.  
  
"So, this is an evil lair," Nemesis spoke, eventually. "I was expecting huge television screens, multiple floors, and at least one giant robot with half-naked kids running around it in a love triangle or something. You know, like -"  
  
"-some anime show, I would guess," Mercury interjected before Nemesis could complete her sentence. "Sailor Nemesis, you might think this is the time for humour and for lightness, but instead, it is actually a time for a complete lack of brevity and a time for concentration on our mission."  
  
"Oh, lighten up, Sailor Mercury," Nemesis grinned. "I mean, come on, you said it yourself: we're either wanted to rescue Ranma, or we're not."  
  
"Kaname, we're here to rescue Kaname. I don't think Yoshihiro would allow Ranma to live."  
  
"So," Nemesis asked, "why did he?"  
  
"Why did he what?" Mercury asked as they headed warily down the corridor, or rather, as she did. Nemesis walked as if strolling along, hands primly behind her back emphasizing her larger bustline with a slightly coy smile at the younger senshi.  
  
"Why did Ranma survive the transition? That moment we were transported here, that we were transformed into energy and downloaded into this system, why wasn't Ranma separated from us and killed? Deleted before he could cause any problems? For that matter," Nemesis asked suddenly, stopping thoughtfully, "why weren't we all killed? All us heroes? Tuxedo Kamen, those Figure twins, Ranma's old friends, that little girl with the angel and pervert teddy bear..."  
  
Mercury blushed at the memory of the tiny stuffed animal that had flown up her skirt prior to the battle, and the little dark-haired girl who'd so jealously looked on. And her friend, the girl in the jester's outfit, who'd flirted with anything that moved in the lookout of Tokyo Tower, while her male friend, blushing and jealous, had looked on. But, she said nothing.  
  
Nemesis went on. "I mean, why not wipe us out completely?"  
  
"I think," Mercury began hesitantly, "that the person involved in sucking us into the system... might have wanted us to remain alive. Ranma, particularly."  
  
"Natsumi did seem to have a crush on him," Nemesis mused.  
  
Mercury tried the first door. Locked. Nemesis tried the one after; it swung open into an empty storeroom. They moved up to the next two doors. Mercury opened hers into a toilet cubicle, Nemesis' opened into a room with a few potplants and a skylight just above the door frame, letting in what looked to be natural sunshine. She decided not to ponder the spacial dimensions, considering they were supposed to be far underground and she could see sky through that skylight, and closed the door. Mercury's next door opened into a large room, with a white wraparound marble staircase, works of art and sculptures lining the balustrade and walls. Nemesis threw open the door to a cloakroom, while Mercury peeped into a shoe cupboard.  
  
"It certainly does leave us with an awful lot of questions. I wonder what Sailor Moon and the others have discovered in their search."  
  
"I'm more interested in what Hotaru found out," Nemesis murmured to herself. Mercury looked over.  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"Nothing." Nemesis threw open another door, and found a whole lot more of nothing. "Um, Mercury, there's, uh, nothing here."  
  
"There's nothing in any of these rooms," came the reply.  
  
"No, I mean literally nothing. It's kind of... beige..."  
  
Mercury appeared at Nemesis' shoulder. "Hmm. You're correct; it's beige. Nothingness." Mercury's visor dropped over her eyes, and she scanned ahead. "There is something, though... while there might be no physical address of the place Kaname is being kept, there needs to be a way to access that location in the system. I believe this room... this... nothingness... is that passage." Mercury carefully placed a boot inside the emptiness, and, holding on to the door frame, pressed down. "There does seem to be a floor here," she remarked. "Shabon spray!" Mist blasted from Mercury's fingertips, spreading out into the void. Where it dropped into nothingness, there was no floor; yet enough mist rolled hazily over a path wide enough for one person at a time to show where the senshi had to walk.  
  
"Sneaky," Nemesis commented, before following Mercury across the pathway. "Uh, you know, that mist is still dropping downwards," she added, halfway across.  
  
"I know. Bottomless pit," Mercury replied.  
  
"Nothing's bottomless."  
  
"There's no physical addresses or statistics here," Mercury explained. "Thus, for no corresponding attributes like height, width, breadth, the drop goes on forever."  
  
Nemesis dropped a hairclip over the side, and watched it disappear. Even enhanced hearing couldn't detect it hitting anything below. "And the party never ends," she muttered. She made sure to keep to the middle of the path after that. A few minutes later, something else occurred to her. "If the room we're in goes on forever in all three dimensions, then how do we reach the other end? And how did we come in at a specific point?"  
  
Mercury smiled privately. "Just because the void is infinite doesn't mean the pathway is. The rooms we are travelling between have physical dimensions, even if they don't necessarily have physical addresses in the database. Thus, their dimensions bleed over into this pathway, as it is the only link between them. If this path were to be destroyed..." Mercury shuddered. Nemesis agreed with that sentiment.  
  
******  
  
In the middle of the pool was an island. It wasn't very big, barely a few metres across. It wasn't made of sand, but some kind of technological tubing, etched with sigils from worlds long past. The tubing and wiring gathered itself in the middle of the island, rose up in striated segments before spreading out at the apex of the cylinder into broad, flattened shapes. Under this mechanical palm tree, Ranma Saotome meditated. He sat, back bolt upright under the tree, legs crossed, hands resting on his knees, eyes half-open as he stared into the lit nothingness that surrounded his island. Just black waves of knee-deep water, that he knew would be brackish if he tasted it.  
  
Thankfully, in his present state, he didn't need to taste it. He didn't need to drink, nor eat, nor anything else. He just had to wait. He was capable of waiting, capable of knowing, capable of remembering - yet incapable of doing. He was just raw data, adrift on an ocean of dark information. Not even adrift; isolated, motionless, locked out of what was going on.  
  
He'd met Kaname, himself without memories. He'd seen Natsumi. He'd joked, he'd done the whole 'Ranma Saotome' show that everyone expected of him, and then once more, he'd been waiting. Locked in this place, had he been left to think, to ponder on his existance, he'd have long-since gone mad. Instead, he closed his mind off, and meditated on himself.  
  
After ten weeks of meditation, he knew himself pretty damned well. He could feel the blood shifting under the surface of his network of veins... he could feel cells in his body absorb oxygen molecules carried in his bloodstream... he could feel his neurons fire in his brain.  
  
And yet, he knew he was imaginary. Just like everything else in this ocean, Ranma Saotome did not exist. All he was, all that existed here, was raw data that had an ego strong enough to bring visualisation to everything here, to the ordered mess of pandimensional information matrices. Information routinely popped in from other planes of existance and flashed back, imaged in Ranma's head as a fish. Occasionally, when he felt he should be hungry, he would grab one, eat it; and he knew more.  
  
Already, he had memorised the complete works of Shakespeare, even if he couldn't understand the english. As well, he had reference material on Einstein-Rosen Bridges (which sounded like they needed an awful lot of support to stay upright), some minor fighting style from the Moon Kingdom, and what sounded like a nice recipe for a pie.  
  
Yet, he knew the fish was just a metaphor. It was a concept of his forced on the world. An image for his ego to see. Just like the ocean, just like the island. The island meant he was above the data, outside of the system as it ebbed and flowed around his sanctuary. The ocean was what everyone else was part of, the raw symbology of the universe created within the Dark Kingdom computer system. Ranma was apart from it, held back by Natsumi. It had taken a while for his personality to flow back together in a way he could recognise, but once self-awareness had been achieved, he found he had just been meditating. Or so his image of his wait told him. That was what his ego believed, thus in a malleable world, that was how it had been.  
  
Natsumi hadn't come to see him since he had met his other self. Ranma understood; she had been busy, trying to set up the system so the senshi couldn't be deleted. And yet, they had been found, and almost effectively neutralised. Ranma had to worry about the ease with which the larger fish he associated with the senshi, with his friends from Kanagawa - even his friends from Nerima - had been cut off from the schools they had been part of by the sharks that were the viral defence prorgams of the system's operating core. One, larger and more powerful than the others, was circling around a purple and a blue fish, others just kept careful watch on another group of fish. No one, Ranma noted, followed one single small albino guppy that swum along the bottom of the ocean.  
  
Ahhhh, Hotaru. Right now, Ranma could scoop her representation out of the water, and know everything about her. Her life with her father, her meeting with the senshi, living with her new adopted parents. Her feelings for Ranma. Even further back, he could have found out about Saturn, Saturn's life, her likes and dislikes, her fears and dreams. Everything about her, those small thoughts at 2AM, those hidden thoughts at 2PM. And yet, while that would make him close to her, something he was yearning for right now, he knew that was wrong.  
  
Here, above the system's data flow, he had power. Real, terrifying power. If he misused it... he would be as wrong as Yoshihiro, and no matter how much Ranma thought he would be acting for the best of everyone if he cancelled the illusion right now, tried to yank the plug on the system and bring Yoshihiro's plans down around his ears, Ranma knew that way would lead to dark places.  
  
"That's right," Natsumi whispered from beside him. "Don't look; just talk." He felt a cool cheek press against his naked shoulder, rub along it just very carefully. A somewhat organic-feeling tube slid across further down as she moved her cheek across his back. "Doing what you were thinking of would be very... impetuous."  
  
"Evil, I'd think," he said.  
  
"That, too. I try and dabble in small ways, but I'm evil."  
  
Ranma's hand found Natsumi's, behind him. He squeezed it tightly, reassuringly. "You're not evil. No more'n I am."  
  
"That's nice of you to say, Ranma, but the truth is -"  
  
"The truth is, you're an abused young girl and you're being used."  
  
"That part of me that the Mas- Yoshihiro awoke, that wants... this..."  
  
"That's -" Ranma fell silent for a minute. That stretched out for far longer than sixty seconds, but Ranma didn't really mind; neither did Natsumi. "That's not true," he continued, presently, quietly. "What's inside you wanted power; not to kill lots of people."  
  
"I did kill lots of people," she said, pulling her hand from Ranma's. "I killed them, over and over, and I ordered more people dead. That responsibility is mine. And removing the memories... that worked for a bit. And then I was having nightmares. When Yamazaki brought me back to Yoshihiro, when Yoshihiro woke everything up in me, I did what he wanted. Does that make me evil, Ranma? I think it does."  
  
"Did you have a choice?"  
  
"The illusion of choice is for weak people."  
  
"But did you have a choice? Like, ya know, transport all these people to this computer system, else they all die?"  
  
Natsumi remained silent.  
  
"I see that was the choice."  
  
"It wasn't a choice," Natsumi grumbled. "I was told to do it and I did."  
  
"You did it because somewhere deep down, you're still Natsumi Otohime, no matter how much ya cover yourself up with darkness." Ranma shrugged. "Look at me. I'm a Dark General, and you made me that way."  
  
"Not quite," Natsumi offered, but Ranma continued.  
  
"I'm evil, I'm bad, I'm, well, ya know, not to be messed with. But..." he shrugged helplessly. "I don't agree with Yoshihiro's views, or his plans. I don't feel evil, I don't feel bad or dark. I don't want ta hurt people, I want to help them. Like my friends. Right now, all I wanna do is go help them. Fight the good fight, die if I have to, but help them in any way I can." He paused. "And you feel the same way, too."  
  
"I do not!" Natsumi was indignant.  
  
"You do. You're not the evil thing you pretend to be, nor are ya the heartless manipulator you amde yourself out to be to Kaname." Ranma turned now, saw that the Natsumi he was talking to was a construct of organic conduits and technological detailing. It was nervous, ashamed. It pulled away from him. "This isn't my image of you, you know."  
  
"It's my image of me," the construct spat bitterly. "I'm not much more'n a machine now, and I've got no choice in that. It shows in how I appear. That's why -"  
  
"You're still a very beautiful young woman, ya know," Ranma blurted out, earnestly.  
  
"You flatterer."  
  
Ranma shrugged. "I been living around women for years now; the fact women like compliments had to sink in sooner or later. But you're trying to distract me. You've been living in this false world, twisted and manipulated ta be what he needs ya to be, and you realised you didn't have to be like that. So yous topped, and you became normal again, became yourself. All sins forgotten, forgiven. And now, you're trying to fight it again, but you don't know what to do. You've pulled me aside and saved my life, and I think ya protected everyone else who fought Raijin in Tokyo... so I know which side of the fence you sit on."  
  
The construct leaned forward, and kissed Ranma on the cheek, buried it's face in his shoulder, sighing. "You're very sweet. I could be doing this for lots of other reasons, you know."  
  
"Yeah, like wantin' ta take over from Yoshihiro again, or anything. But you know, I trust you. I trusted you when I found you in the gutter, I trust you now. It's a gut thing. Just do me a favour? Think better of yourself?"  
  
Natsumi pulled away. She nodded, slowly. "I'll try, Ranma."  
  
"When can I get in there? When can I help my friends?"  
  
Natsumi looked away for a moment, before turning back. "Soon." She smiled, then her body warped, twisted, and flowed back into the shape of the mechanical palm tree it had formed from. Ranma stared at it for a moment, then smiled, ran his fingers over the random metallic artificialness of the bark, before turning around again, sitting down, and continuing his meditation.  
  
******  
  
The journey had seemed to take forever, but Hotaru was out of Nerima now, and the feeling she had of being watched melted away. Curious Chinese eyes went elsewhere, with a DING of a bicycle bell and the wet thud of a rear wheel connecting with a head, followed by the tinkling of broken glasses, a splash, and an angry quack. The people who had followed her from the Nekohanten were gone now, far behind. But, as she passed a side street, she heard a voice that made her stop, and smile.  
  
"Ho, Goddess, I have not seen your visage in some time. Goes your life well?"  
  
"Hello, Kuno-sempai," she replied, her voice betraying her depressed state.  
  
"I understand by your tone that the cur Saotome has wronged you? I shall rip his still-beating heart -"  
  
Hotaru shook her head. "No, he's done... nothing. He's... who he is at the moment has been kidnapped. And he... I worry for him, Kuno."  
  
Kuno nodded gravely. With Ranma no longer much of a threat towards his affections for Akane, nor interferring in his new work life, Kuno found he could forgive and forget easily enough - much easier, he suspected, than if Ranma still lived in the area. For that, he found himself strangely thankful that Ranma was under the protection of his Goddess. Regardless of his feelings towards the man who had imprisoned his Pig-Tailed Goddess for several years, Ranma had helped him on occasion, even if only by accident. "I understand," he said.  
  
"Do you?" Hotaru asked. "I mean, do you know what it's like to have someone you love ripped from your side, transformed into a stranger beyond all recognition, to be thrust back together... only to keep seeing little bits of the person you loved come through in this new person? A gesture, an accent on a word, that special look they reserve only for you, in your special moments..." Her voice drifted into silence.  
  
"I understand," Kuno repeated, quieter, thinking of his sister. "There was a time, long ago, when..." but he too fell silent. Hotaru started walking again, Kuno joining her at her side. Hotaru, her eyes slipping sideways, had to admit Kuno looked a lot different in his workman's overalls, bokken strapped to his back. "But," he continued, eventually, "I had to admit that the woman I once knew was no longer, that she had perished in the flames of time, my beloved sibling burnt almost beyond recognition." Hotaru guessed Kuno wasn't talking about a physical injury, but rather, something psychological.  
  
"Kuno-sempai...?"  
  
"Yes, my Goddess?"  
  
"You seem much more subdued. Is something wrong?"  
  
Kuno thought for a block or two, then shook his head. "No, nothing is wrong. The city has been destroyed, and millions are dead, yet nothing is wrong. I feel nothing for them on an emotional level, for to me they are but numbers; pure statistics, an exercise in mental arithmetic. I find that I feel... empty towards this calamitous event, that I know I should feel something; yet I do not."  
  
"I was there, in the middle of the disaster," he continued after another block, "and when the monster was destroyed at Saotome's hand, when everything around us lay in ruins, I felt drained. I had little neergy left with which to stand, to fight, to leave. I was glad the fight was over; I was glad I was alive; I felt nothing more. Around me, people have fallen low with grief, and have looked to me to be a bastion of strength, a well of fortitude from which to draw strength from. My work, menial though it might be, encourages others to continue with their lives through their emotional infirmament. And yet... I find myself..." He fell silent again. Hotaru smiled, softly, warmly, and wrapped an arm around his while leaning her head gently against him as they walked.  
  
"Kuno-sempai... everyone deals with grief in their own way," she murmured to him. "You dealt with it as a warrior of the days long since passed: you got on with life, honouring those dead by continuing and helping others to continue. Do you think those million people who died would be wanting us all to stop our lives? Do you think they'd want us to fall apart over their deaths to the point we can no longer function as a people? Japan has seen... much death. Hundreds of thousands have died, in disaster, in war, in paradimensional invasion. Many more have been laid low by corrupting influences, others crippled by doubt and indecision through changing cultural identities. And yet, you continue to act with strength, with honour, because you know who you are, you know where you came from, and what your station in life is. You know what your future will be, because you have a singular vision for your life and nothing will stop you from achieving your goals. This disaster... the destruction of the interior of Minato Ward, it affected so many people in so many ways. Many of us who are left lost friends and family in the attack; many of us sympathise with each other, and many people feel their complacency stripped away, the glasses with which they viewed our world as being happy. No one thought we could be attacked; no one thought we could lose so many people. War, invasion, attacks - that is all something that happens to other countries, to other people. We are Japan; we offend no one, we attack no one, we live our own little lives within our country and we do not cause trouble. But trouble seeks us out, because we are Japan."  
  
"There is indeed a great power here, waiting to be born," Kuno rumbled beside her.  
  
How right you are, Hotaru reflected silently. "Yes, because there is power here. And with this attack, the peoples' complacency is gone; we can see the world as it truly is and can no longer believe our country is no more a part of the world than the moon is part of this world. Our choices, our actions, affect other people. Our life, our culture, has consequences that we must be prepared for; that sometimes, people want what will germinate here in the future, and will do anything to take it from us. Our people know we are vulnerable now, and they are scared. Giant monsters can rampage out of the oceans at any time, and mostly, we are defenseless against them. And that frightens people to the point they can't operate. Which is where people like you, who will grieve in their own quiet ways hidden away from public view for the losses, are important. You show people that we can continue on with our lives, and that doing so is the best way to honour the fallen."  
  
"Never give up, never surrender," Kuno said.  
  
"That's it exactly. If we stop being who we are, if we stop living our lives because of meaningless violence, then we have already lost."  
  
They walked in silence for a time, then Kuno stopped. Hotaru stopped with him, tired, but not wanting to show weakness to the man who was looking to er for reassurance, for guidence.  
  
"Goddess," he started, "I must thank you. For the discussion, and for making plain to my eyes why I have felt so these last months. I wish most heartily you had visited Nerima earlier and allowed me time to speak with you - I fear I did not find you were in the locality last you were here." The lunch date with Akane and Kaname, Hotaru realised. "Yet I fear... I fear not only for Saotome, for you suggest he is in grave danger for his very existance, but also for your own well-being. Please, my Goddess... for the sake of my own well-being and fortitude, please understand that I wish for you to take the most of care for your days in this dark time. I sense something not quite right about reality, and I realise you, as a heavenly defender of justice and stability, will be involved in this immortal combat, and I wish for you to be safe. If you would allow me -"  
  
Hotaru's finger found its way to Kuno's lips, shushing him. Taking a moment to phrase it suitably, she said, "Kuno-sempai, thank you for the kind honour. Thank you for your offer, for I would take comfort that you are defending me in these times. Yet, for all that we could accomplish as so, your absence from these streets would encourage disaster and apathy in the region, destabilising it and possibly upsetting the cosmic balance. In these dire time of the fight against the Darkness, I feel the problems caused by your absence here would far outweight the positives brought by your protection of me. Thank you, again, for the offer, though." She smiled, thankful that Kuno bowed to her decision.  
  
Kuno saluted her with his bokken, drawing himself up tall as he did so. "It is an honour to serve one so fair and innocent," he said, bowing physically this time. As he began moving upright, Hotaru caught an unguarded moment on Kuno's face that showed just how exhausted he was. He had to be working an awful lot, and Hotaru realised that his lean frame was thinner than usual.  
  
"Kuno-sempai?"  
  
"Yes, my Goddess?"  
  
"Have you been eating?"  
  
"No, my Goddess. This region... is growing poor. And I offer my larder to those most in need before I partake of it myself."  
  
"Kuno-sempai?"  
  
"Yes, my Goddess?"  
  
"Eat properly. If you are to shoulder the burdens of a community, you must be well enough to carry them." Hotaru smiled wanly, briefing allowing her fingers to trace down her cheek. "I know what it is like to be... frail. To be weak. But to be strong for everyone, you need to look after yourself. Please. Eat. For me. Consider it an order from your planet-sized Guardian Goddess of Saturn."  
  
The exhausted but amused glint that appeared in Kuno's eye suggested that perhaps he knew better than that now, but he nodded his acquiescence. "Aye, my Goddess, verily shall it be so. Now, if you'll excuse my presence, I am needed." Hotaru nodded, and Kuno left, heading back into Nerima proper, as the Senshi of Death and Rebirth watched.  
  
"Be safe, Tatewaki," she murmured softly to herself, before turning and continuing on her path to Kanagawa. Yet, she had barely taken a dozen steps when something in the direction of Yokohama exploded into a huge cloud of dust. "Oh shit," she said, faintly, before transforming and taking the the skies.  
  
******  
  
Half an hour of walking, and Mercury and Nemesis reached the end of the pathway. Before them stood a simple wooden doorway, with a polished-gold doorknob. Nemesis quirked an eyebrow at Mercury, then took up a ready position directly in front of the door, a metre or so back, while Mercury stood to one side, hand on the knob, ready to twist at Nemesis' nod. The elder senshi moved her head, and Mercury turned the knob, throwing the door open.  
  
"RICHTER WAVE!" Waves of coherent gravitons blasted through the doorway and knocked Agent Sato from his chair back into the wall. But, with colossal effort, he pushed himself forward, legs bent forward at the ankles like he was walking into a stiff wind, and he closed the gap towards the door. Mercury slipped around the edge of the door into the room, taking care to avoid the worst of the heavy gravity waves, while Nemesis gritted her teeth, and increased the pressure against Sato another notch.  
  
"Really..." he said, conversationally, "you couldn't beat me... previously, Sailor Nemesis... what makes you think... you'll have any more luck... now?" He reached the doorway, and snapped a fist out. Almost impossibly in the funnel of gravities, his arm lengthened, and his fist grazed Nemesis' jaw. She gasped, and dodged to the left, sacrificing her attack. Sato moved to her quickly, joined his fists together and hammered her into the invisible pathway. Breath gusted from her body and her eyes bugged out, yet she managed to roll over and flip up to her feet, taking a cautious ready position as she circled around Sato.  
  
Sato, for his part, looked energised now, angry, lusting for this battle. The hungry smirk on his face told Nemesis lots, and the fact that he obviously felt he didn't need to take so much as a lazy ready position to face her threat told her more. As well, those previous bouts with Sato she had lost, and the last she had been lucky to leave with her life - although there was the possibility that she had been allowed to leave.  
  
"Miss... Matsuda," Sato continued. "Oh yes, we know all about... you. Your presence has been most... beneficial to our cause. You provide... distraction. You provide... drama. You help us... more than you hurt us." He didn't even bother dodging a rapid punch from Nemesis, which tore her glove open across the knuckles. She ouched, pulled her fist back and tucked it under her arm for a moment while the skin began closing over the wound. "You were allowed to leave... that restaurant. You were supposed... to bring us... Sailor Saturn."  
  
"She was busy," Nemesis shot back.  
  
"Oh well," Sato shrugged, then punched Nemesis in the gut. She felt his fist slam through her defences, her muscles, her stomach, and flatten a kidney on floating ribs, her liver being smashed up against her spin brutally. A second later, he brought a hand down in a chopping motion on her right shoulder, and she heard bone snap under the strain as her shoudler blade and then collarbone were crushed. A moment later, and the hand was brought up again, slapping her upwards from under her chin. Her head snapped backwards, and her body followed with the power of the strike. All the time, Sato stood with one hand in his pocket, otherwise looking completely unconcerned.  
  
Nemesis struggled to rise, but failed, passing out from the pain. Sato tut-tutted over her limp unconscious form, then turned back to enter the room, where he found Mercury rapidly untying Kaname from her chair. With a brutal ripping sound, Kaname reached up and yanked the tape across her mouth off, and the anger in her eyes bespoke much pain and suffering to be inflicted on the agent.  
  
"We have business," she spat, and leapt at him across his desk. Without batting an eyelid, Sato backhanded her half a foot into a wall, plaster exploding into the room in an ever-expanding cloud of whiteness. Kaname, dazed and woozy, pulled herself upright even as Sato's hand reached into the cloud and grabbed her by the throat, yanking her back out of the cloud as she choked from the pressure on her windpipe.  
  
"Just because Yoshihiro has... decree you must survive until... transition, that does not mean you have to remain... whole." Sato's fist bunched, and he hammered the side of Kaname's chest. She tried to scream, but hot razorsharp slivers of bone penetrating her lungs cut the scream off more effectively than any gag or self-restraint. Mercury leapt on Sato's back to try and gain Kaname some room, but he reached back with a single hand, grabbed her collar, and threw her headfirst into a wall. Mercury slumped to the floor, momentarily dazed even as Nemesis tried to pull herself into the room with little success.  
  
Without a care, Sato threw Kaname into another wall, and she bounced off it to fall to the ground. "This is... too easy," Sato muttered as he stepped around the desk to get to Kaname. She lay on the floor, breathing in rapid, shallow breaths. Sato reached for her, grabbed the front of her dress and hauled her upright. The dress tore more than it already had been, and Kaname slumped backwards, a single breast rolling free under gravity now it was no longer restrained. Sato humphed yo himself, then dropped the woman.  
  
Or, rather, he tried to. Twin hands had clamped around his forearm and refused to budge, and although his hand was now open, and Kaname dress released, Kaname's elbows were locked in position and refused to let herself be lowered any further than she already was. Slowly, she raised her head, glaring at Sato with a burning hatred. With his free hand, he first tried to unhook the fingers digging into his arm, but confusingly, that attempt failed. So he tried to slap Kaname's face. The first time, she ducked her head forward, and the slap missed. Sato frowned and cocked his head to one side curiously. He tried again; Kaname's head rocked back to avoid it. His frown deepened. The third slap, she refused to budge for, and his hand impacted on her cheek and went no further.  
  
Now she let her fingers go, and dropped low to the floor on one foot, spinning around with her other leg extended. Her leg smacked into Sato's before he could react, and he dropped to the floor, his head smashing through the edge of his desk sending up an explosion of splintered wood in all directions.  
  
Without looking, Kaname's fist darted out and snatched those splinters in flight that posed greatest threat to the still-dazed Mercury while Nemesis watched silently in surprise, not feeling the few splinters that peppered her cheeks. To her, Kaname - when she could see her from Nemesis' position - was moving in blurred motion, like she had last time Ranma had come home. Even now, Kaname picked up Sato, and threw him into the wall beside the door, before flipping over the desk with a neat little somersault at the apex of the leap and delivering another kick. Sato blocked the kick, and twisted his body to delvier a double kick of his own. One, Kaname blocked. The other caught her in her injured side, and she gasped, her body not fully regenerated. Regardless, she was thrown across the room into a filling cabinet, which exploded into reams of paper and steel slivers that pock-marked the nearby walls. Sato jumped at her, throwing one powerful punch that created a sonic boom in the small room, causing Mercury to drop unconscious again and nemesis' eardrums to momentarily burst. She gritted her teeth while her eardrums began rebuilding, continuing to watch the fight in the office.  
  
Kaname dodged the second punch, Sato's fist burying itself deep in the floor. His face snapped around to track her movement, but she was already on her feet as she moved, and her foot snapped up and into his face. His sunglasses broke in two, and Nemesis saw the hatred on his face. He yanked his hand from the floor, then tried sending three punches at Kaname. Lazily, almost, she blocked all three before stepping into his defences and headbutting the bridge of Sato's nose. His face wavered for a moment, and Nemesis watched a hand twitch into static before solidifying again. he staggered back, Kaname taking the opportunity to slam a few more resounding punches into Sato's gut, lifting him up and clear across his desk on the last one. He slammed into the wall, becoming buried in the plaster, before shaking his head and stepping out.  
  
"What's the matter?" Kaname goaded. "No snappy remarks? No comebacks? Just gonna lose like Ryoga? Maybe ya might even cry a little, just so's we can all see how bad you got hurt."  
  
Sato vaulted over the desk, then dusted off the shoulders of his suit. "I thought... actions such as this... were all the language you understood, Kaname." Then, Sato stopped dusting his suit, and looked up at Kaname. "Ah. Mister Saotome. Welcome back. We... missed you."  
  
"It's good to be back," Kaname said, nodding her head to the side slightly, offering the next move to Sato. Sato snarled, and rushed forward towards Kaname, who sidestepped and tripped him up with a casually-placed foot. He sprawled out in the doorway, and looked up; straight into Nemesis' worried eyes.  
  
Within a heartbeat, Sato was up, hauling Nemesis upright in front of him in one hand as he turned to face Kaname.  
  
"Oh, please, don't fight through the girl," Kaname groaned. "Try not to be so cliched."  
  
"I think... you might feel differently... in a moment," Sato said, as he backed up, stepping out of the room. Kaname stepped forward, agressively, ready to end the fight right then and there. But Sato, smirking, brought his arm out to the side, giving Kaname a clear shot at Sato, Nemesis dangling from his hand off to the side. Her eyes opened wide, and she panicked, wriggling and kicking. "Mister Saotome, it looks like you have a choice to make... you can either save her... or you can kill me."  
  
"Or I can do both," Kaname growled, launching herself at Sato. Mercury, her eyes focussing on Sato, reached out suddenly.  
  
"Ranma! Don't!" she called, urgently but ultimately too late. Kaname's fists impacted on Sato's chest, and he staggered back. His fingers opened, and Nemesis dropped safely from his fingers even as Kaname whirled around and snapped her heel into Sato's cheek. His head rotated too fast to be controlled, and somewhere in his simulated form, whatever bespoke for a spinal cord was stressed far too much and snapped. Sato slumped to the ground a moment later, and Kaname turned to smile at Nemesis.  
  
To find she wasn't there. "What?" Kaname stepped to where she had last seen Nemesis, and before she placed her weight down on her final footstep, she found no surface. Looking down, she could see Kaname disappearing into the blackness. Without hesitation, Kaname dove over the side after her.  
  
"Noooo!" she heard Mercury cry from the office, then blackness swallowed her up.  
  
******  
  
Sailor Saturn found upon arriving at the scene of devastation that emergency crews had been in attendence for some time. The GOTT offices had erupted into huge fireballs as underground gasmains had been detonated, and the media crews in the vicinity all called it an act of deliberate terrorism, conducted by Ranma Saotome and his associates. The other senshi were involved in rescue efforts, Saturn noticed, but the emergency crews seemed to be standing well clear of them, almost as if they believed the senshi themselves were behind the attack.  
  
But that was stupid.  
  
Nevertheless, Saturn landed at the triage station, and wandered among the beds, healing those seriously injured that she could, shifting aimlessly, not letting the destruction touch her. She knew from experience, when dealing with destruction on this scale, remaining emotionally detached was most important.  
  
Eventually, she noticed Sailor Moon behind her. "Sailor Saturn."  
  
"Sailor Moon."  
  
Sailor Moon looked away for a few moments, uncomfortable. "We found out a lot today. We know... we know what Yoshihiro's doing in the middle of Tokyo." She was uncharacteristically subdued. "They're turning people into monsters when they go to work, turning them back when they go home. It's... perverted. It's sick. And they're building something. Something big. We need to talk to Sailor Mercury. She might understand. But she's..." Her eyes shifted away again.  
  
"In there?" Saturn asked quietly. Sailor Moon nodded. "Why haven't you -"  
  
"We can't find them," Sailor Moon said. "I know Sailor Mercury and Sailor Nemesis are still alive, but I can't find them. It's like they're nowhere."  
  
"They found Kaname, then."  
  
"We think so." Sailor Moon paused. "But then Nemesis... I didn't feel her die. But I can't feel her now."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"We -" Sailor Moon broke off as they both heard a buzzing sound. They turned around, looking for the source of the noise, and focussed on an area of sky that began warping. "Dark Kingdom monsters!" Sailor Moon growled, drawing out her sceptre. Saturn, beside her, whirled the Silence Glaive around into position. She too could feel the waves of pure evil, of darkness, flowing from within the slipgate. The temperature in the area dropped dramatically; water from fire hoses froze solid into ice, and the flames of the numerous fires burning around the area coughed and died almost as one. It seemed very bad. But then, something seemed familiar, and she felt a warm caress, and smelt ramen. And not just any kind of ramen; the ramen one ate when out on a date with a broke boyfriend.  
  
To her, at that moment, the smell of cheap ramen opened her eyes in more pleasure than she'd ever had from smelling roses. "ramna?" she asked the universe, very quietly. The slipgate flashed wide, and then figures appeared in it. An exhausted Kaname dropped to the ground with Nemesis cradled in her arms, and beside them, Mercury managed to just keep on her feet.  
  
Saturn dropped her Glaive, running to Kaname and gathering her up in her arms. "Ranma?" she asked again. "Ranma?"  
  
"'s up, hota..." Kaname mumbled, more words lost to the slurring of one trying to stay awake against exhaustion. "zss k's, k?"  
  
******  
  
The night was cold, and the interior of the Ai Sou was lit only by the dancing of flames in the fireplace. Kaname was stretched out on a small matress in front of the hearth, being warmed up. Hotaru sat next to her, a hand casually resting on Kaname's hips. Mitsuki sat just beyond Kaname's head, and the other senshi dotted themselves around the lounge, on chairs and sofas.  
  
There was no noise, bar the crackling of logs in the fire. No television, no radio, no music. Once, Minako started humming a tune to herself, then broke off as she realised she could hear the music out loud that she had going in her head.  
  
There was in fact one sound in the entire inn. That was the sound of Ami's fingers tapping at keys on her palmtop. Eventually, she sighed, and leaned backwards to stretch her back.  
  
"Well?" Usagi asked, still quiet and shaken from the day's findings.  
  
Ami pinched her nose between a thumb and forefinger. "Well," she repeated.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Ami, don't keep us in suspense! What's going on?" Rei demanded.  
  
"We've got about fifteen weeks to find a way to stop the end of the world," Ami said simply.  
  
"End of the world?"  
  
"Yoshihiro... he's gotten hold of a battleship. One used by the Dark Moon Kingdom in the invasion of the Moon Kingdom... one of the defected vessels from Mercury. The battleship has warp engines, capable of twisting the fabric of the hyperspacial planes our respective kingdoms resided in. And while the White Moon Kingdom is fragmented and scattered... the Dark Moon Kingdom... was left whole. But blocked from entering either of our spacial planes. Sealed off. There are many smaller conquered planes that we call the Dark Kingdom, because territorially, they form part of the kingdom, but they're not the main plane of reality, where the initial invasion came from. With the battleship Yoshihiro holds, though, he has fully-functioning engines that can travel across those barriers."  
  
"And he's going to do what with that?" Usagi asked. "Shuttle in troops?"  
  
"Oh, I wish it were that simple," Ami sighed. "The construction you found... would be being mirrored in that corresponding physical location on Earth. Here, it is used to suck up power. The one on Earth... is different."  
  
"How different?" Hotaru asked.  
  
"With the engines of the ship connected to it?" Ami answered. "Enough to breach the seal Queen Serenity placed on the Dark Kingdom that ended the war."  
  
"So... they'll have doorways to the Dark Kingdom?" Usagi asked again.  
  
"No," Ami replied. "No, not at all." She took a deep breath. "With the energy Yoshihiro would gain from killing every man, woman and child in this version of Tokyo, Yoshihiro could power the engines, disrupt the dimensional seal, and transpose fully the Dark Kingdom and the primary Earth plane. Every human on Earth would cease to exist within minutes, and billions and billions of Dark Kingdom monsters would stand in thier place."  
  
Silence reigned.  
  
SAILOR MOON SAYS:  
  
This took a while. And it didn't take place over much time at all. A single day. And I could have gone on for more, too, about this single day, but decided to leave anything else for the next chapter. I'm also working a fulltime job now, so ouch, my writing is suffering (but now I have money! Just no sleep :P). In addition, there's been a death in the family, and my brother who's cheffing overseas is owed $US13,000 by the US army and will probably lose his house soon if they don't pay up in the next few weeks. So, yes, we've had fun these last couple of months.  
  
Anyways, next time on Love, the end of this miniarc. The battle for the fates of every person living in Tokyo is fought; lives will be changed, people will die, and from the ashes of the destruction of Tokyo, a new hero shall emerge. Next time, in Love chapter 17: Paradise Reloaded. 


	17. Love 17

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.

WARNING: This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, and shameless rip-offs. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned.

LOVE

By

Raymond Cooper

Chapter 17

- Paradise Reloaded -

The next morning, there was no training. The senshi were tired enough, and Kaname herself was still exhausted. Hotaru, sitting in a chair across from Ranma's futon, smiled softly as she watched the sleeping woman twist and roll, tangling herself up in sheets and blankets until there was nothing visible except for a tuft of copper-coloured hair. But was it just Hotaru's eyes, or was the colouring just a little darker, that bit redder than before?

She was ever hopeful, but also, she found, sad. As Sailor Saturn, Senshi of Death and Rebirth, she had seen much death in her many existances. And Kaname Mizuno, the personality that had sprung up in the absence of anything Ranma in his body, would effectively be dead when Ranma came to. Perhaps. There was always a chance that she would be integrated into Ranma's personality, as she did seem to embody much of Ranma's more positive traits, along with a few of the niggling complaints she had about her boyfriend.

His knee-jerk reactions at times of stress, for example. His actions, too, while might have been directed for maximum impact at the time, could often backfire later on as he didn't think of consequences too often.

In fact, about the only consequences Hotaru had seen Ranma plan for, mull over, deal with, were those dealing with her and, to a lesser extent, Mitsuki Matsuda, Sailor Nemesis. And that seemed to be more because he'd had bad experiences in the past when he didn't think of the consequences with women.

Of course, having met (and become friends with) his last fiance, Akane Tendo, Hotaru could understand why. As much as she liked Akane, she realised that Akane ran much too hot with Ranma, and simply expected too much of he who hadn't yet had a proper relationship, who hadn't had much experience with women, and Ranma was completely oblivious to much of what went on in relationships. Or he had. He was getting better, Hotaru admitted. Much better. They went out together, ate together, he helped her places, and she in turn helped him when away from the other senshi, helped him understand women. For although Hotaru looked sixteen, her mind was much, much older.

Kaname stirred, and two bright blue eyes opened, peeking out from under the cocoon seeking out -

- Hotaru. The blankets lowered a little more as Kaname shuffled, rolling over a couple of times until they were loose enough for her to wiggle out to her waist, whereupon she sat upright, still staring at Hotaru. Then - "God, Hotaru-chan, I never thought I'd see ya again."

"That's... that's still you, Ranma?"

The woman before her considered, then nodded. "Yeah. For the moment, at least. Maybe for a while after that, too."

"Oh? Then... I guess I had make the best of this." Hotaru unfolded her legs under her blanket, and stood up from her chair, crossed the room and sank gratefully onto the partially covered form on the futon. She wrapped her arms around Ranma, and snuggled in tight. "It's been too long, sempai."

A hand wrapped its way around Hotaru's head, craddling her as gently as a mother with a child. It felt warm, contrary to the coolness of the dorm's rooms. The other hand gathered Hotaru's blankets around her tighter, trying to keep her warm before Ranma obviously got bored with that, tossed her blankets aside, and pulled her under his. There they lay for an hour or so, just resting quietly as the dorm timbers made loud cracking sounds under the lack of heat as they contracted tightly, and the creaks from the ceiling, above the second floor, as snow built up.

By nine o'clock, there were sounds of stirring in the dorm. Usagi, surprisingly, was the first down. She muttered darkly all the way into the kitchen, and from the warm, fuzzy smell that emanated from the hall, Hotaru guessed she had just showered, and showered a lot. She still seemed very unsettled by the realisations of the day before, that their enemy, the new Dark Kingdom lord Yoshihiro, was altering humans into monsters, just to use them as a work force, then change them back when they went home. And then Ami's equations and research showing that Yoshihiro wasn't just planning to use the human race as a labour force, but planning instead to completely wipe out all people on Earth, replacing them with the monstrous denizens of the Dark Kingdom as he brought that dimension into coexistance with Earth's dimension, had just blown Usagi's mind almost completely. After locking herself in the bathroom all night and crying, now she was apparently starting to get angry. It was a pattern Hotaru had seen before in Usagi; the longer she spent crying over the plans of the evil-doers, the more Usagi was charged to fight the enemy with everything she had.

Ultimately, Yoshihiro didn't have much of a chance. It was more just a question of whether or not they managed to stop him before he killed the population of Tokyo, and consequently the rest of the population of Earth, or if they stopped him after his current goal was completed and he was reinforced by billions of monsters... ultimately, in the cool part of Hotaru's mind that was the cold, calculating Saturn, it was just numbers of human lives lost rather than the end result. To the rest of Hotaru's mind, she was determined to make sure those numbers remained as few as possible.

To be perfectly honest, Saturn, too, wished for few human casualties. While she was used to death, it wasn't something she was often pleased about.

Following Usagi was Rei, who had probably been awake much earlier, but... for one reason or another... hadn't come downstairs until after Usagi began heading for the stairs. Makoto was the third down, grumbling about making breakfast so late and being glad of leftovers in the fridge. However, when Minako passed Ranma's door, an acrid smell wafted in. Someone had apparently vomited recently, and judging by Minako's heavy footsteps, it had been her. The muted squeals of disgust from the kitchen said a little more, then Minako heading back to the upstairs bathroom said the rest.

Mitsuki's descent was different. She came downstairs, walking normally, then slowed as she approached Ranma's door. Hotaru could picture her wondering if she should knock, wondering if she should come in. She pictured Mitsuki in her mind riven with indecision as personalities waged war as to whether they'd enquire whether or not Ranma was still among the senshi.

But she surprised Hotaru, taking two light steps across the hall and pausing before continuing out to the kitchen.

"What was that about?" she wondered aloud.

Ranma chuckled. "She checked in your room," he replied, his light voice reminding Hotaru he was still in his female form.

"How can you tell?"

"What else is on that side of the hall?" he asked, rhetorically. "That, and I could see the packets that make her up."

"What?" Hotaru perked up instantly.

Ranma blinked, surprised himself. He waved a hand in front of his face, experimentaly, and wowwed to himself silently. "I, uh, can see the metaphorical," he explained, surprising himself with more words. "I guess," he continued, after a while, "that I kinda absorbed too much from lookin' at the ocean." He didn't explain any further, just cast his gaze around the small dorm room, something approaching a look of wonder in his expression. Hotaru, worried, gripped his hand tightly.

With her weaker grasp, Ranma shouldn't have noticed much difference in her grip, but he registered it and looked down at her uncertain eyes. "Hotaru?"

"You're scaring me, sempai," she replied.

"How am I scaring you?"

"You can see things," she said, simply. "And you... feel... different."

"Different?" Ranma remarked, a hand automatically raised to scratch the back of his head nervously. "It's nothing to -"

"You taught us to see people's auras, Ranma," Hotaru reminded him sternly. "I can see - you. You're different."

Ranma shrugged, self-consciously (and more than a little difficultly with Hotaru wrapped around him still). "Hotaru-chan, this is... it's... this system. It's not a perfect representation of the physical plane Earth resides in. There are imperfections in the submatrix that crop up in everything. Have you noticed how some of the more refined meats now taste like soggy noodles? Have you noticed that people seem to be a bit more forgiving? Have you even noticed the fact that winter still shows no signs of letting up?"

Hotaru buried her head up against Ranma's chest, breathed in deeply, before she unlinked her arms from around his back and melted in reverse towards the edge of the futon. She flowed to her feet, still not looking Ranma in the eye. "You don't even sound like him," she griped. "You... I was willing to overlook it, but you just feel wrong."

"As wrong as the evil Mistress Saturn that tried to hurt me?" Ranma asked casually, his left eyebrow raising just enough as he turned his gaze on Hotaru with a penetrating stare. Hotaru had thought she was the only one with her patented Stare of Ages, but apparently Ranma had either been taking notes, or indeed he'd learned much in his time in limbo.

"Whatever do you mean?" Hotaru flustered, her eyes dropping again.

Ranma's eyes dropped away, found something else to look at. "Nothin'. I guess this isn't the time ta argue. Not when there's so much ta do."

"Yes." Hotaru was subdued again. Ranma's hand reached out as he stood up, unwinding sheets and blankets from his body even as he touched Hotaru's chin lightly.

"Hey. We all have our secrets." He gathered together some clothes, and left the room, headed out towards the hot springs. Hotaru stayed behind for a couple of minutes, silent, motionless, eyes unfocussed and unblinking.

Finally: "But they're not secrets if others know them."

XXXXXX

Ranma held a hand up to the murky morning light, covered the sun and watched the dim light stream through his fingers. He dropped the hand, and it splashed into the hot waters of the spring, sending up a spray of particles. With a glance, Ranma had them stay in place, shimmering in the bad light. "I know you're there," he said, conversationally.

"I know you know," Kaname replied, her form shimmering into view in the cloud of droplets. She seemed to be disjointed, wobbling, tearing apart and drifting together. Ranma knew it was just a reflection of his psyche on the cloud, and the movement of light on the droplets was causing the appearance of Kaname's vague form. "I know everything you know now."

"Only for now," Ranma reminded her. "Because, I don't know what'll happen when you get back in charge."

Kaname waved a hand. "'Back in charge'? I don't think that will happen."

"Maybe not, but I think it will," Ranma asserted. "Else I think I'd'a reabsorbed ya when I was brought back."

"Yeah... there is that," Kaname agreed. "But - how did you get brought back?"

"I don't know," Ranma admitted. "One moment I'm meditating, the next Natsumi turns up, grabs me by the scruff of my neck, and tosses me into the ocean. I came up spluttering, to find myself being throttled by that Sato guy." He shrugged. "It wasn't a nice feeling. It felt like I had ta swim through treacle for a few kilometres to get anywhere, and then I was back, and I did my thing and beat him. Kinda."

"And almost got Mitsuki killed," Kaname grumbled, folding her arms with a frown. "You should have listened, you know."

"I could hear you in my head. And this is still all in my head." The droplets of water began to slowly drop back into the springs, taking Kaname with them. "And you're still in there... even if ya not out here, you're still in there." He tapped the side of his skull.

"Ranma?" Kaname asked, just before she submerged, "why aren't you a man again?" Then she was gone, leaving Ranma to puzzle over that one while he let bruised and aching muscles be soothed by the water.

XXXXXX

For Nabiki, she was slowly tossing a small rubber bouncy ball between her hands as she leaned back contemplatively in a chair. Her panic of the day before was wearing off... the world was still there, just different. Not her world. Not completely her. But she was still there. Which had to mean there was something she could get out of this, some way she could twist this world to her advantage. Which was the problem she was wrestling with now.

How could she turn someone else's world to work for her?

The ball drifted lazily between her fingers, before she grabbed it, and hurled it back at her other hand. Yet, with some applied thinking, she could slow the pattern of the ball down, make it travel in slow motion.

Or was it? Was it perhaps actually travelling in real-time, and she was merely having her own relative perception of time slow down? She couldn't be sure, unless someone came into her room.

Conveniently, there was a knock at the door, but the knock was slow, the sound dragging out like a dull thud on a thick dungeon door. With a start, she lost her concentration, and perceptions snapped back to real-time, the ball missing her outstretched fingers and smashing through the outer wall as the door slid open. Nabiki's growing hearing heard a couple of small sharp cracks as the ball continued to accelerate before it flew into a pigeon and both exploded in a squawk of feathers that drilled themselves into nearby rooves.

"Nabiki?" Akane. She, too, was calmer, after hearing Kaname had been kidnapped. There had been something on the news the night before, about a hit on the GOTT offices by Ranma Saotome's terrorist co-conspirators making a rescue on the captured lieutenant. The news programme had shown a devastated street, torn down several metres and ripped up, buildings nearby burning. A few of the hurried shots from news vans showed senshi in the flames, pulling survivors from under rubble, out of vehicles, trying to shore up walls while those who apparently didn't consider the senshi to be paragons of evil these days pulled other survivors out or doused flames, turned off gas and water mains, and the like. But the senshi went unidentified in these snatches of footage; instead, the only mention of them had been as super-powered terrorists threatening the economic safety and stability of Japan. Akane had cheered up considerably after seeing this report, not for the bad publicity for Ranma's new harem, but for the fact that it sounded like Ranma... what had been Ranma... was now safely back in the hands of people Akane could consider to be friends.

Nabiki knew, even with the remaining bad blood between them, Akane would have been dying inside, knowing that Ranma was in trouble, knowing that she was unable to help. It wasn't so much that she was unwilling; Nabiki knew that the women Ranma was living with were so much stronger than even he could be when he set his mind to it. Not that Ranma was invulnerable or unbeatable, but that he had that single-minded determination to be the best, to be the winner when all was said and counted, that he counted defeat as more reason to train and prepare himself for round two. She had to ponder, was that what he was doing now? Training off somewhere secret in his head? Learning what Nabiki was teaching herself? Would he reappear in a flash of light, tell everyone to stand back, and fire off a new move, one more powerful than a string of moko takabisha that would somehow return everyone to reality.

Or, more likely, destroy the system they were existing in and wipe everyone out. But Ranma had a way of winning against incredible odds, mostly because he wouldn't give up. Mostly because he wouldn't let himself die without knowing he was The Best. At least...

... The old Ranma wouldn't have. Nabiki didn't know about the maturing young man who had grown up in Kanagawa. She didn't know enough about him. But he seemed less susceptible to her, to Akane, to Shampoo, to the others. When she had seen him in combat, Ranma had seemed more confident, more dynamic, knowing when to step back, when to direct others into a point, when he was outmatched, when he didn't need to go all out on an opponant. Or when he did.

"Akane," Nabiki replied, turning away from the hole in the wall. Akane was still staring at it.

"Did... did I just..."

"No."

"Oh. Because that looked like you threw -"

"Faulty wall. Having it replaced. Had it covered over with textured wallpaper."

Nabiki could see the words, 'In winter?' cross Akane's face, but the youngest Tendo shook them off and remembered what she came to ask. "Kasumi said breakfast is ready. And asked me to get you. Do you...?" Akane wasn't good at the tip-toeing around method of questioning, so Nabiki saved her further embarrassment by standing up, pushing her chair back from her desk.

"I'm fine, Akane. Honestly. Do you think a little depression could keep me down when there's money to be made?" She rested a hand casually but reassuringly on Akane's shoulder as she headed out the door. "Trust me. Have I ever lied to you before about anything that important?"

"Constantly," came the reply. Nabiki smirked mischieviously, while Akane broke into a hesitant smile.

"So you know I'm back to my old self, then. Well, Kasumi and father will be waiting." Nabiki gestured out of the room with her free hand, and Akane preceeded her from the room while she slid the door shut behind her.

XXXXXX

"- on the new Outer-Minato Gardens, replacing the, ah, old Shibakoen Park, proceeds on schedule. DMK Heavy Industries has promised that soon, residents in nearby wards will be able to see the new buildings rising up, utilising the latest in construction techniques." The camera panned to the side of the chairman of the Tokyo City Planning Committee, centring for a moment on a handsome man with blond hair in a black suit.

"It is him," he said, in the darkened room.

"Yes," she agreed, sitting next to him, head on his shoulder.

"We should kill him where he stands," said another.

The first waved her off. "No. He's too strong for that."

"Maybe he needs the gentle touch of a woman," pondered a fourth. "I mean, he has to have money and, ummm..."

"No, he needs worse than that."

"Worse?"

"You know what I mean. We have to -" He broke off, turned to look in the eyes of the woman beside him.

"I know. I don't like it, but I know."

"I don't want to -"

"I know that, too." She kissed his cheek, tenderly while absently rubbing a hand. "But we all have to do what we must. All our parts have to be played."

"I just wish -" he started, then sighed. "I wish I knew what happened to her. We saw them all on TV. All of them gone. And that... thing. That was something of his. He... took them."

"They're still alive," the third said. "I would know otherwise."

"Yeah," he murmured absently, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I would, too."

XXXXXX

"From this point onward, Tokyo strides forward into a new era, a bright and shining age of functional design married with brilliant asthetics," Yoshihiro said, winding down his portion of the media spiel. "Tokyo will be reborn, with a mind towards showing the way forward for the world - making Japan once again the leader of the minds of the world." With that, he fell silent for a few moments, eyes gazing calmly, yet strangely intensely, across the audience of cameras and journalists before him. Most were Japanese, but a few American agencies had reporters at the event to record a snippet for the end of their nightly news broadcasts. Yoshihiro could also feel the faint touch of Chinese minds in the packed auditorium room, and nodded to himself.

Not that it showed to anyone else, but Umiko, standing in the wings, could see it in him. She had raised this man, from bairn to the Next Big Thing. He would give the people what they wanted - a strong and powerful Japan, a nation more powerful than any other - but in doing so, he'd exterminate the human race. She smiled to herself. You had to admire that in a man. Forward thinking of that magnitude was sorely lacking in people these days.

"I give you -" Yoshihiro's hand reached back to the cloth covering the model of the city behind him. It was a large architectural prop, Umiko knew, that Yoshihiro had commissioned for this very event, but she hadn't seen it. She just knew that he as satisfied with himself. The hand clenched, grasping the sheet, and with a tug, it slid off the model. "Crystal Tokyo!"

A gasp went up from the crowd, an unconscious intake of breath as people blinked in the sudden profusion of light, sparkling forth from miniature towers of crystal. And each building, Umiko noted, was really excased in crystal - hard diamond, brilliant emerald, sultry ruby... solid, single blocks that rose up around internal workspaces and dwellings. Almost as if Yoshihiro had called forth a vision of the future into being and intended to actually build the hopes and dreams of humanity into a reality a thousand years before Neo Serenity was supposed to. But no, he couldn't really be wanting to do just that; this had to be illusion, misdirection. Even she hadn't been aware this was part of Yoshihiro's plan, so close to his chest had he played it. This was new, this was... surprising. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned her gaze from the model to Yoshihiro.

The expression on his face... he was drinking in the surprise, the appreciation, the spontaneous applause that rose from the floor. He revelled in the adulation, and she knew that his ego was satisfied. The model had to have been worth it, then, for him to feel that accepted and loved. But the expression also held something else: gloating. He was enjoying this intensely, and loved the irony of using the Moon Kingdom's future metropolis as the official stamp of the human race's oblivion.

She caught Kenichi's eye from across the room, and felt an urge of lust rise up in the pit of her stomach. The infant monster gazed back, pain in his eyes. He wasn't matured, nor was he advancing in power; he was a human, held helplessly in thrall by a demonseed that kept him quiet about what had happened to him. He couldn't do anything that would bring harm to himself, and he had also found he couldn't do anything that might bring harm - had his boss been targeted for assassination, and Kenichi had all the time in the world to take the assassin's bullet, he wouldn't have been able to. But the seed within him responded to Umiko's feelings; she could feel it reach out and touch her from the other side of the stage.

When the gasps had died down, and the questions started, Yoshihiro began with answers.

"Yes. A shining example of the hopes and dreams of humanity. A reflection of the soul, if you will."

"Protective shaped polycarbide support structures, rendered invisible to the naked eye, will brace the interiors of the shells. With the molecularly-rebonded crystaline skins, the buildings will be impervious to anything bar a nuclear strike. Or a direct hit from a comet."

"Of course there will be plenty of living space. We plan on excavating several of the recently-discovered buried magma bubbles. We've already contracted the prototype work for one such facility out to the research organisation GEHIRN."

"No, to my knowledge none of my associates have been investigated for the destruction of Tokyo by that rampaging monster. And I, myself, was in America at the time."

As the questions came and answers followed, the subtly play between Kenichi and Umiko continued. The bodyguard standing beside Kenichi realised that his companion wasn't keeping an eye on events, and nudged him, but Kenichi's eyes continued to be drawn to Umiko against his will. Eventually, the guard rolled his eyes in mock disgust and pushed Kenichi in her direction. Slowly, without attracting attention of the assembled press corps or officials in the room, Kenichi drifted across towards Umiko, and without a word, she drew him offstage, behind the curtains, down a corridor and into a small utility room that offered a small amount of privacy as well as a small amount of discomfort.

Moments passed before there was a thump on the closed door as Kenichi sagged against it, Umiko righting clothing and tucking claws and ears away while he gasped for breath. She felt nothing now; no lust, no urges. No satisfaction. It was almost as if something had opened within her soul and was sucking the enjoyment from actions that traditionally had brought a lot of enjoyment, and while physical urges were satiated, she found that only her charge was bringing her pleasure of any kind now. Only by serving the Master could she find contentment, that which could make her curl up and purr like some kind of idiotic giggling teenager. Yet, while the mental urges were gone, the physical ones remained, and now she had partaken, these were starting to drive her crazy.

"Did that make you feel better?" Kenichi grunted from the door. "I mean, did that really make you feel any better? What you did to me... what you're still doing to me... what you want me to do? Does that make up for whatever you're missing?"

Umiko didn't bother to even pause to consider as she smoothed out the lines on her jacket. "Yes. A lot. Do you know what stress I have in my job? Do you know how many whining idiots I have to put up with to run a military operation? Do you know what kind of forward planning is required to bring a city, no, a country, a world, to it's knees? Do you have any idea how hard it is to support someone destined for greatness, to be the hands that carry out his wishes, the grease that eases his way, the parent to console and protect? I do all this, and yet am still his loving subject..."

"So what's this? Something that doesn't relate to his mad dreams of world domination? Something that you can relax in?"

"Stress relief," Umiko agreed, running fingers through her mussed hair. "Without this, I would be... well, much less effective in my job. And, of course, you relate to the Master's plans. Just... that this, our activities, don't."

"Can I never see you again?" Kenichi groaned, pulling his shirt roughly closed and fumbling with buttons as the woman shifted against him. His attitude was one of revulsion, but he wasn't sure if he was reviled at himself or at the creature who was using him as a human scratching post.

"Hmmm. May be. I don't know." Umiko sucked on a thumb while she thought. On anyone else, Kenichi thought he'd have found the action unbearably cute and undeniably attractive. And, indeed, if he hadn't felt the multiple penetrations of his manhood and the insidious motions inside his head, he would have found the action attractive. On some level, he knew that. But for the moment, he was stuck thinking of Umiko as a monster.

As, in fact, he himself now was.

She tiptoed to give him a light peck on the check as she opened the door and he pulled back; but being jammed against the door, he found he actually had little room to manoeuvre in, and her lips brushed his skin. The feeling was electric, as she had intended it to be, and he felt stirrings in his loins that were supposed to angatonise him now they were finished for the moment, but instead, they caused waves of revulsion to ripple up and down his spine.

As Umiko tapped her way up the empty hall, Kenichi stealthily drew his pistol. It was large, heavy, a reassuring weight in his hand. He figured he might not be able to pull the trigger, and he was correct, but pointing it at her retreating back and imagining pulling the trigger was almost as satisfying.

XXXXXX

Punch. Kick. Dodge. Jab. Punch. Kick. Dodge. Jab. Punch. Kick. Dodge. Jab.

Same old, same old. Faster than Ranma was used to the senshi fighting, yet he knew it wasn't fast enough. They had gained in skill while he had been in stasis, yet their progress wasn't nearly enough to carry them through a fight with one of the GOTT agents. And if there were any more of those Cybrid things that Mercury and Nemesis had mentioned fighting when trying to rescue Kaname, then Ranma wasn't sure the senshi could afford to fight them for an hour or two, either.

Mercury was lucky enough that she had her hacking abilities, and could probably help out more that way, but the others would have to pick up their fighting skills and speed.

And strength. Ranma could teach them speed, but strength? He wasn't sure. His own superhuman abilities he possessed at the moment were a mystery to him. Had they been gifted to him by Natsumi? Had they been some side effect from acquiring all the knowledge he had while kept apart from the others, from his own body? He wasn't sure. All he knew was that now he could move so fast, he literally wasn't being seen, even with the enhanced vision of the agents he had faced several times. Possibly he could get them up to throwing super-powered amargurrikans, but even that speed was as a snail to the agents. So it was a problem, how to turn the senshi into any kind of credible threat?

Saturn paused, her eyes sweeping over him curiously as she found a lull in her kata. She held her last action, a punch, the other fist pulled in tight against her stomach. "Ranma?"

Her voice was unusually distant, and Ranma felt as if he was at the end of a long tunnel. What was going on? Then he realised, sighed with weight, and tried to smile. He wasn't sure if he did or not, but Saturn stepped forward, a hand outstretched. Then there was someone next to him. Someone who looked like him, but, he knew, wasn't. Kaname Mizuno. She sighed, and shook her head at him. He understood. It wasn't his time now. Not yet, not again.

Instead, it was hers.

"Take care of her for me, will ya?" he asked, with a forced lightness in his tone and a frustrated gesture at Saturn. "Tell her I'll see her again." Maybe, he thought. He wasn't sure yet.

Kaname nodded, unsure of herself, before Ranma found himself thrown into darkness.

"Ranma?" Saturn repeated, growing nervous. Ranma's face had become distant, his eyes seemingly losing all vitality while his body had grown still, locked into the position it had been in.

"Hotaru," Kaname replied. The way she said it, the subtle inflections of her voice, told Saturn all she needed to know. While her skin grew cold, her stomach dropped and bowels tightened. Kaname stepped forward, a hand reaching out towards the younger girl. "Ranma said -"

"No!" Saturn cried, before turning and fleeing into the dorm building behind them. Nemesis shook her head, and followed the young senshi inside, purple hair flowing behind her like a living thing. Kaname's hand faltered, then dropped to her side as she turned her gaze towards the ground.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was comforting, somehow, like the person who's hand it was knew exactly how to touch someone who felt like their heart was broken. Sailor Moon. Kaname turned towards her, and Sailor Moon's arms wrapped around her shoulders, one raising up behind Kaname's head as she hugged the woman tightly, tenderly.

"It's not fair on any of us," she sobbed.

"I know. And we'll find some way of stopping this," Sailor Moon replied. "On this, you have our word." She pulled back a step, leaving her hands on Kaname's shoulders, and Kaname saw the other assembled senshi nodding with determined faces.

"Because, without this sorted, we can't win?" Kaname asked.

"In part," came the reply, "but also because it affects us. And, because it was decided yesterday, we have to start caring. Have to start laying the groundwork for the future again. We can't allow ourselves to be sidetracked into believing that this battle for our lives, and the battles to shape the future, are unconnected any more."

Kaname nodded dumbly, not taking any of it in. She pulled away after a moment, heading for the dorm. "I've got to go," she apologised.

XXXXXX

"Hotaru?"

"Go away."

"I can just sit here and talk through the door, you know."

"Go away!"

"Going away's not going to change anything. He'll still be gone."

"I know that. I just want to be alone."

"Being alone isn't always a good thing. I know I... advised someone close to me once, before he was close to me, that is, that he could only rely on himself. That he couldn't afford to rely on others, because they let you down. But other people have some perks that being by yourself can't match."

"Like what? Since you're talking..."

"Well, sex for a start. Although my experiences with it aren't exactly normal, what I had of it was good. By yourself, that's nothing terribly close in the range of emotions, of sensations. There's something about being... that way... with someone that makes you wonder just how you ever managed without someone on top, or beneath. That somehow, you feel empty when someone isn't filling that gap that isn't actually there."

"Really."

"It's like being tickled. You can tickle yourself, but that has no effect. Have someone else tickle you, though, and... well... we go back to finding out about sex. Not so much in the full-on sexual manner, of course, but... in a lighter way. Same feelings: that fluttering in your stomach, the tightness in your limbs, the sensation of not wanting to stop that delicious contact..."

"Did Ranma ever tickle you?"

"Only in my dreams. But other people can also lend you shoulders to lean on. That makes problems more bearable. With other people -"

"Mitsuki, the planet that you defended in the Moon Kingdom was schitzophrenic. The others might not remember, but I do. Ice cold one day, boiling hot the next. Incredibly effective at interfering with orbital mechanics, prone to sudden changes in weather and geography, Nemesis was a hell-hole of a planet and too unstable -"

"Are you going somewhere with this?"

"You change your mind too much. That's your planet's influence. But you made it literal. You literally change your mind too much. And that plays with your sense of responsibilities. Right now, you offer comfort. In five minutes, you might be arguing with me again about how you think you still stand a chance with Ranma."

"So, what's your planet's influence on you, then?"

"I'm a cold, frigid bitch who can boss any of you around if I want to."

That effectively ended the conversation. Mitsuki shrugged, rolled her eyes, and wandered upstairs to her room to shower after training. Behind her, from the mouth of the hall, Kaname's eyes watched and followed until Mitsuki was out of sight. Then, she stole out, snuck along the corridor, and pressed an ear to the door to Hotaru's room. She could hear the muffled sounds of sobbing.

With great care and precision, Kaname silently slid the door open, slipped inside and shut the door, too quiet for Hotaru to hear over her muffled sobbing into the pillow. Then, she crossed the floor quietly, and the first Hotaru knew of another's presence, a pair of arms pulled her into an uncomfortable embrace, unpracticed but filled with certainty. Hotaru's face grew warm in Kaname's cleavage, and she tried to pull away, but Kaname wouldn't let her move. "Shhh. I heard. And I can guess, anyway. I don't know what happened, but I know... Ranma was back. And that must hurt so much."

"It does," Hotaru sobbed. "And you have no idea."

Kaname found herself wondering about Shibaru, and even about Hotaru, and she sighed. "Maybe. Maybe not. That's not for me to say. All I know is what I promised to you. What I said I'd do. What I feel for you now. I'm not Ranma, not mentally, but perhaps I can help with the physical-ness you need. If you need a hug, if you need someone to tell you everything's going to be okay... if you need someone to fight for you, Hotaru, I am that person."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I think I have a duty of care in this body to preserve it's life and relationships until the owner comes home," Kaname said with a sad smile.

"There has to be a way you can both survive," Hotaru said in a small voice.

"You don't really believe that," Kaname said, kindly. "You want you boyfriend back. And I understand that feeling. I'm like his twin. A twin with really big boobs." Hotaru smiled, sadly, and poked almost playfully. "And I can understand that... I don't know. Attraction? Affection. You look at me and you're not seeing me. You're seeing Ranma. It's taken a while, but I think I understand." And although she didn't add it onto the sentence, Kaname also thought she accepted it, for the first time.

"Kaname?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For being... a big sister. I never really had one before."

"That's fine, Hotaru."

XXXXXX

With agonising slowness, time passed. The days warmed, and snow stopped falling. What was still in evidence about the cities was growing dirty and brown, lining gutters and the edges of gardens and creating pedestrian hazards. It was a time of year the girls normally disliked, being that time in transition between the frigid beauty of winter and the fun attractiveness of summer, but the senshi didn't notice. Training had consumed them. Faster, stronger, deadlier. They knew they had to gain in all three qualities. Kaname sparred with them as she could, and surprised herself when she wasn't thinking about her actions. For some reason, not concentrating on what she was doing brought Ranma's abilities to the fore, but the concentrating on ironing, boys, work and The World was very hard and involved work, and Kaname couldn't keep it up for long.

Like on one of the games of tag she played with the senshi. Bouncing about Kanagawa like kangaroos on amphetimines, Kaname leapt from building to building. Some part of her brain was looking out for her, as her feet dodged slick ice and puddles of water automatically, and she danced low under power and phone cabling while twirling to avoid birdlife and vehicles. Her actions made the exertion look easy, epic poetry in motion with a fluid easy lope that converted into a gathered leap at the edges of walls and rooves. Almost like music, two of the senshi reflected as they struggled to keep up.

Ranma they had been able to keep up with, if not exactly touch him. But Kaname... whatever had happened when she came back from wherever she had been had made her sometimes stronger and faster than Ranma. Or perhaps it was Ranma himself inside her, able to influence while she was distracted? The senshi didn't know, and Kaname really had no idea either.

But this particular day, three weeks later, Kaname loped ahead of the pack once again, and Jupiter grumbled, her hand sweeping through where she had been a fraction of a second earlier and the senshi stumbled forward onto the roof. At speed, she rolled, arms windmilling and smashing tiles. Jupiter wasn't bruised, just dirty and cold and angry at yet again falling prey to the same manoeuvre Kaname caught her with all the time. She slammed her fists into the rooftop, pushing herself up before dusting herself off and continuing after the pack.

Venus dodged to one side of a small metal chimney pipe, dodged to the other side around a small antenna farm, then leapt the space between two houses. Right behind Kaname, she saw the smaller woman hit the edge of the next roof, and bounce down into the alleyway between both like a riccocheted bullet, and continued outwards. Venus, head tracking her target, forgot to continue to adjust her leap, and she smashed into the edge of the next roof before dropping to the ground winded. Sailor Mars, close behind, made the same mistake, and ended up lying across Venus in the alleyway. Sailor Moon and Mercury danced lightly off the rooftop's edge and passed over the two entangled senshi, Nemesis and Saturn not far behind.

Mercury put on a burst of speed through a second alleyway, and reached within tagging range of Kaname. Without pausing to savour the moment, Mercury's fingers reached out -

- just as Kaname dropped down through an open manhole. A burst of ki later, and within a scant handful of seconds, she burst from another on the opposite footpath. Mercury cursed mentally for not being more observant moments before the truck hit her and carried her one hundred metres down the road. She picked herself out of the grill cursing herself again even as the driver shakily got out of his cab to see what he thought would be a bloody corpse, and started with surprise when he found no body in evidence, although the front grill was pushed in surprisingly far. Almost like he'd hit a concrete block. He didn't notice the blue blur above him as he vomited in relief at not finding a body.

Saturn and Nemesis overtook Sailor Moon, and danced on ahead. Sailor Moon was slowing, looking around, but neither of the other two senshi paid her any attention. Saturn put on a burst of speed, that Nemesis reached similarly, then bounced around an industrial smokestack, leapt across a fifty metre gulf between buildings separated by a canal, before she realised that Nemesis was starting to pull ahead.

Neither woman was watching where they were going, though, and Nemesis slid on a patch of ice. Saturn knew she shouldn't, but turned her head to give a cheeky grin, and promptly slammed into another smokestack that rang like a bell.

Sailor Moon continued past, pacing herself. As Kaname let her catch up, Sailor Moon conserved her energy, and as she passed within reach, instead of reaching for Kaname like the others had, Sailor Moon ducked low, transferring her downwards momentum into a right turn, and she kicked off the factory rooftop they were on into the air. Kaname, unsure what Sailor Moon was doing, but not wanting to be tricked into following her, kicked off in the opposite direction. Both ran, jumped, pirouetted, ducked under machinery until Kaname, losing her concentration, found a shadowy hiding spot where she could regain her breath and concentration once more.

But before she could start to relax, let her concentration on household issues drop, Kaname felt the gloved hand on her shoulder. Kaname tensed, then relaxed. "You did well. How did you know I was coming here?"

"You looked tired. I knew you'd have to rest soon, and I wanted to catch you before you began to rest," Sailor Moon explained.

"Quick thinking," Kaname complimented her with. Sailor Moon looked embarrassed. "And you won. Congratulations. That's your first ever win. Of any of you, these last three weeks." She hesitated, about to shake Sailor Moon's hand, but reconsidered and hugged her instead. Sailor Moon looked surprised.

"That's a little more than I was expecting," she said when Kaname disengaged her arms and pulled back. Kaname blushed, and sat down. "We've never had much of a chance to talk, have we?"

"It's been busy," Kaname said, turning her head.

"Even Ranma and I never really talked," Sailor Moon mused. "We don't have a lot in common, apart from some mutual goals and, well, mutual friends."

"That's one way of putting Hotaru," Kaname said wryly.

"But it's something I should change. Starting now," Sailor Moon said, as she squatted down next to Kaname. "Do you like kareoke?"

"What? No, I... I don't -"

"What? You don't like kareoke? Why not? It's so cool... everyone getting up and trying their hardest..."

"I meant to say -"

"And some of the songs are pretty good. Someone once said Minako should become an idol singer, but she doesn't have the voice. Nor," Sailor Moon smiled sweetly, "does she have even half of Makoto's talent."

"That's all very, erm, disturbing, but I was trying to say -"

"And Ami becomes such a demon when she gets up to sing. Especially if there's been any ceremonial thing that gives her an excuse to drink. Rei... well, Rei just likes to sing songs about how pure people are, and then chases Minako around when she makes snide comments about -"

"Sailor Moon!" Kaname interrupted. "I was saying that I don't know." She looked away. "I don't know a lot, I guess. Most of it I was just never exposed to. Prior to meeting Hotaru, I worked, I played on The World at night, and started going to the gym. And since I met Hotaru, I've done nothing but run and be replaced by a more capable and more experienced me. My only experience with love or lust or anything was for a guy who turned into a monster in front of me and tried to kill me - and all of you! I can't fight decently, and I can't do much except - well, look scarier than I am, I think. Everything else isn't me. It's not Kaname Mizuno, it's who was here before."

"You sound more than a little bitter," Sailor Moon observed softly.

"Maybe that's because I am." Kaname's eyes tracked back and forth, looking outside of the impromptu cave in the industrial facility. "I'm coming to accept it, though. I can't change it. And, really, I am him. And who knows?" she added, eventually, her eyes growing distant, "Maybe it won't be so much a replacement of personalities... of lives... maybe it'll be an amalgamation."

"Perhaps you're that part of Ranma which doesn't get out very often?" Sailor Moon suggested.

"How do you mean?"

"You know, maybe his subconscious, or... or his personality when it's unencumbered by responsibilities and problems brought about by himself and others." Sailor Moon smiled. "But this is just my opinion, and as everyone reminds me often enough, that's not worth very much."

"I don't know about that," Kaname said, drawing herself up slightly. "I mean, sure, we've never talked, and you distrust me a little, but that's to be expected. You look out for everyone."

"You notice?"

"It was kind of hard not to," Kaname admitted with a smile, "the night you answered the phone and abused me."

"Oh," replied the other. Then: "I apologise for that, you know. I thought... you know... Ranma had run off and left Hotaru to..."

"I understand. No, really," Kaname raised her hand to forestall Sailor Moon's coming interuption, "I do. I'd be angry, too. You guys are all tightly-knit, and thinking some guy who you didn't know too well had run off and not left any kind of message for someone who had fallen for him..."

"I think we could have treated him better, too," Sailor Moon thought aloud, standing up to flex her knees. "It's not like us - not like me - to be so continually judgemental... I don't understand it at all, sometimes. Sure, I might not trust much someone until I know they're not an evil monster out to eat my transformation brooch or my friends, but until someone proves themselves untrustworthy... I treat them like I would a friend. And Ranma... I didn't. And it's confusing. Perhaps it's being so far from Mamo-chan all the time. You know, um..." Sailor Moon waggled her fingers rather than spoke. Kaname got the idea regardless. "And I'm not... it's not... well, I think I might be just a little bit jealous."

"I understand," Kaname repeated. "Cute guy, cuter girl, sweeps a friend off her feet... I understand completely. You get - well, jealous. That no one's paying the attention to you and your relationship that they once did. That they're finding friends outside of your small group, that... well. It's like they're all leaving you, even if only in your mind."

"That sounds a bit like it exactly," Sailor Moon replied. Then she started listening. "The others are almost here."

"I've been listening," Kaname said from the ground, standing up. "They're as stealthy as a herd of elephants. And they wonder why they can't catch me?" She grunted, just as Saturn and Nemesis appeared in the entrance to the hidey-hole. The others showed up over the space of the next minute. "You all lost. Sailor Moon won." There were groans all around, and Mars shot Sailor Moon a jealous look. "But we should all go back for breakfast. Then into some more training. Something a bit slower today." Kaname considered, then smiled. "Today, I'm going to teach you not to get burnt."

XXXXXX

The fire was decent, and chestnuts lay roasting in the middle of the flames. Kaname gestured at them. "The idea is to not get burnt."

"Then we don't stick our hands in it," Venus replied.

"No no no, you misunderstand," Kaname continued. "You have to get the chestnuts out without burning yourself. AND without putting the fire out, or wearing protective clothing. Oh, and I'd like you do do it as normal people."

Hotaru, Mitsuki and Usagi all dropped their transformations; after a moment, so did Makoto and Ami. Venus and Mars held out until Usagi glared at them, and then they too dropped their transformations. Soon, all the women stood around the fire. "I'll demonstrate, so watch closely now," Kaname said, looking around before stepping in closer. She could feel the heat on her clothes, and with her hands, she made quick prepatory gestures, imagining the movements she would need to pull this off. She had woken with this idea in her head that morning, and had played the game of tag to ready herself for the manoeuvre. Once she had the idea in her mind of what she had to do, she closed her eyes, readied her hands, and began quietly to recite the shopping list Makoto had left on a bench that morning.

When she opened her eyes again, feeling the move was complete, she had only listed the first two items on the list, but her hands were full of nuts. Hot nuts. She ouched, and dropped them, running around in circles until Hotaru grabbed her, and with a very definite deep controlling look in her eyes, she grabbed Kaname's hands. With a brief glow and tingle through the joined flesh, Kaname found her hands cool and a healthy pink again, rather than the stinging prickly heat and bright red they had been moments earlier. Hotaru held the glance and her hands slightly longer than either would have felt comfortable with in these circumstances before dropping both. "The problem," Hotaru announced quietly, "isn't the fire. It was her nuts. They burnt her hands. I recommend dropping them after we grab them. I'll heal any injuries," she added, to forestall the doubts Rei, Minako and Mitsuki were about to voice. Usagi's eyes were wide open.

"I didn't even see your hands move," she said wonderingly. "They were there like this," she gestured, her hands held loose and ready to make the grab, "and then they were like this," she continued, her hands cupped with an imaginery load of chestnuts in them.

"And then they were like this," Kaname joked, waving her hands about and dancing as if she were still burnt. "Thank you, Hotaru-chan."

"You're welcome, ... Kaname-chan."

"But maybe," Kaname remarked suddenly, as Rei took her place where Kaname had been and was sprinkling chestnuts back into the flames, "this might not be a good idea."

"What do you mean?" Usagi asked.

"I can show you how to do this, Hotaru can heal you, but somehow... I don't think you can do it." Kaname shrugged. "At least, I... my body... had trained for years to do this stuff. I might not be able to do it, but my body can. It's like it's encoded inta me, genetically."

Hotaru blinked.

Kaname continued. "And until I can think of a way for you all to find a way around that limitation..."

"Kaname," Rei said, stepping close, head lowered, placing a hand on Kaname's shoulder, "I know you might think we're useless, and in the ways you mean, yes, we may very well be, but some of us might want to try this regardless. Normally, we're not as strong or as fast as you. Or as skilled. We make up for a lot of that with magical protection and magical strength when we become senshi, but normally, we're just average women."

"There's no such thing as an average woman," Kaname interjected, pointing at Rei. "And there's no such thing as an average man. We're all different, and we all have our weaknesses... as well as our strengths. I don't claim to be superintelligent, and anyone who thinks could probably outthink me in a fight. Maybe even Ranma, but Hotaru thinks he's a god." Hotaru blushed and looked away. "I mean, I get the idea he's smart, but not that intelligent. You know, smarts and intelligence being two different things. Um, okay, I'm going to stop on this line of conversation..."

"No, no," Minako offered, "continue bitching about Ranma all you want. Rei does it late at night."

"Hey!" exclaimed Rei, indignantly. "I do not!"

"You forget how close our rooms are, and you keep growling out his name," Minako offered innocently. "And you sound like you're slapping -"

"Minako," Makoto warned, suddenly behind the other woman, "you might want to go get some housework done. Like right now." Minako eeped quietly, ducked around the taller woman and vanished inside the dormitory. "Sorry, Rei. Go ahead and burn yourself."

Rei fixed Makoto with a stare that the others found uncomfortable. Makoto looked particularly unimpressed. "Thank you for the vote of confidence."

Makoto shrugged. "You're so positive about my cooking, I should be positive about your training."

Rei shot her another glare before readying herself in front of the fire. She stared, concentrating, then closed her eyes and ran through some of the mental preparations her shrine training had shown her. After a few minutes, in which Usagi sighed theatrically several times until Kaname shushed her, Rei's hands shot out into the flames. Her hands moved fast, blindingly so, and she grabbed at a few chestnuts before the pain registered and she yanked her hands from the fire, dropping the nuts back into the fire as she did so. She stared at them momentarily, flesh blackened, before Hotaru grabbed them and focussed on the injury. Rei's surprised shout barely had time to gestate before the pain was gone, and Kaname then stopped the others from practising in case of major injury or stupidity (on her part more than the senshi's).

This, Kaname decided, would take some more thinking.

XXXXXX

And she was still thinking a fortnight later, sitting up on the roof late at night. The nights were still chilled, probably below zero if Kaname had bothered to check, yet she had no blanket to shield her from the wind and temperature; sitting alone, in her pyjamas, staring up at the stars did more to focus her mind than sleeping did, or training, or anything. For a change, there were no clouds. Just a brilliantly clear sky, made all the clearer by the coolness of the atmosphere. Even the lights of Kanagawa, and the glow of Yokohama and Tokyo on the horizon did little to obstruct the beauty of the skies.

There she sat, still, almost meditative. She wasn't aware of passing time, just a brilliant moon rising above her, reaching it's zenith, then descending again. It seemed much larger than normal, and Kaname thought that must be due to some kind of atmospheric event. After an hour or so, her dreamy state revised that to some kind of rendering fault in the graphical environment. Beside her, tonight, sat a VR headset. It was hers, all she had come into this world with, and her fingers occasionally strayed over it.

About 2AM, she made a decision, and placed the helmet on her head. With firm fingers, she snapped the goggles down, locking their arm into place with a well-practised twist. Then, reaching out inside herself, she logged into The World.

XXXXXX

"You're not real," Kaname said.

The purple and cream-coloured cat sighed and shook her head under her big floppy hat, and made gestures.

"But in these palces, am I any more real?"

The cat sighed, and looked at her steadily.

"You're right, I guess. We're as real as we make ourselves." Kaname sighed, stood up, and pushed away from the tree. "This place is a metaphor, isn't it?"

The cat nodded, and gestured for a minute, taking in the vista around them: green grass, a pink and purple twilight sky, lazy clouds and an orange sun, light spreading out further and further from the shimmering disc as it descended beneath the horizon. Then she looked at Kaname again, an eyebrow raised.

"Eloquent. Very eloquent. But really, The World is just... our subconsciouses working in unison to create an understanding of what happened. On some level, people have to understand what happened to us. That we're all dead, and this is just... memory. A computer game, with formerly real people as the NPCs." Kaname turned back to the cat, waving around her as she did so. "This is all just as fake as people know somewhere in their hearts that the so-called 'real' world is fake. Trees don't feel like trees. Food tastes just that little bit like soggy cardboard. People outside of the immediate disaster area... well, people can't figure out why their friends are more caring, more placatery, more willing to bend to your will - it's because they're a support system dedicated to fooling you into thinking you're in the real world."

The cat nodded honestly.

"Thanks," Kaname replied, "but I know I'm just as real as those fake people constructed from memory. I'm not Kaname Mizuno; I'm Ranma Saotome. I'm not a meek computer operator, I'm a martial arts master with no equal. I'm not shy and abrasive, I'm arrogant and innocent. And in living this life, in holding back much of what I can do, I'm making myself even more of a fake. In not doing what flows into my head while I'm thinking about other things, I'm resisting the nature of what I am."

The cat laid a hand on her shoulder, and Kaname turned to face the cat, looking into her ruby-coloured eyes. They looked kind, compassionate, sensible. Something passed between them.

"Yeah. You're like me too, aren't you?" Kaname eventually said, realisation dawning. "You're a mix of something that doesn't exist and something that does... and like me, you have purpose, you have a goal, but the difference is, you know what yours is in your world. I've yet to work out what mine is, in my world. All I know... all I can figure... is that somewhere, somehow, something is going to happen in ten weeks. Oh, I know this bad guy is going to destroy the world then, but I don't know if that's what it is that I stop. I don't know if my actions will cause things to get worse, or get better. I've heard the others; they all think Ranma is showing signs of being one of these bad guys, a "Dark General" as they call them, and that makes me think... maybe I help this Yoshihiro. Maybe I destroy the Earth. Or perhaps I... I save the Earth. Or maybe I help someone from either side, or don't, or have to do something completely different. But I just don't know and that's what's getting to me. The feeling is growing ever more urgent, and that urgency is starting to drive me crazy."

The cat cocked an eyebrow again.

"Yeah, that kind of crazy. I'm looking at Hotaru, at Mitsuki, at Usagi even, in ways I hadn't thoguht of before, nor wanted to. It's, I don't know, creepy. Like something in me has been started up, a long fall towards a giant body of mass. Gravity. That's it exactly. Something's pulling me. I just don't know which way it's pulling me."

The cat floated off a few steps, then looked back over her shoulder.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think sleep would be good. Maybe I might get some understanding of all this... thanks." Kaname turned again, waved, and logged out

XXXXXX

coming to consciousness on the cold rooftop. She felt the cold bite through her clothes immediately, and she realised the moon had not only moved, clouds had shifted across the skies and were partially covering it now. Also, she was aware of someone standing behind her. "Hotaru."

"Mitsuki, actually," said the older woman, as she sat down behind Kaname, wrapping a warm blanket around her and leaving her arms there to keep Kaname wrapped up. "It's just... I noticed you weren't in your room when I went to get a drink, and well, I wanted sex."

"You wanted WHAT?"

"What?" Mitsuki asked, taken aback at Kaname's reaction. "I said I wanted to talk to you. Didn't I?"

"No!"

"What did I - oh wait, KARI!" Mitsuki knocked her head hard with a fist, rolling her eyes up towards the skies in supplication. "I give up. My medication's not working in here too well, and half my personalities... well, they're not quite so happy to play it down the middle. You know, taking half of my personality from them, half from the more positive side of things... it's just... guh... well, it starts a lot of fights. Like Hotaru and I a few weeks ago. It's... bah." She fell silent.

"Actually," Kaname said thoughtfully, after a minute's thought, "I understand."

"You do?"

"Uh huh. Remember? Ranma Saotome plus Kaname Mizuno equals something really screwed up." She shrugged. "I hear voices in my head. Not quite voices, though... it's like they're in another room. There's someone saying I should be sweetness and light, and another that says I should conquer the world. Yet another wants to go on a training trip to learn how to use what new abilities I have that I'm not consciously aware of, and my voice just wants to find a nice guy and marry him before I get too old. I just don't know. It's all since... well, since you and Mercury rescued me from Agent Sato. You know? Something that happened that day I was captured... I was... changed. I can see... more. I don't want to see more. I can hear more. I don't want to hear more. There's something there, just out of sight, out of mind, hovering about that's -"

"Yes?" Mitsuki asked, when she realised after a couple of minutes that Kaname wasn't going to continue.

"I don't know. I'm meant for something. I don't know what." Kaname shrugged, and struggled from the blanket to stand up. "I had better go to bed. Get some sleep before I have to outrun you guys in the morning again." And with that, she left, VR helmet held in hand, leaving Mitsuki behind.

XXXXXX

Ten weeks, Yoshihiro thought from his throne. Ten weeks. It would all be over in ten short weeks. It was like waiting for Christmas, he guessed, being able to do whatever he wanted in the meantime, but having to be good in case something went wrong before the big day. After all, if he was revealed as an evil monster, then he guessed his ease at access to the necessary construction site would dry up. The project's construction would fail because then he'd have to force his will upon the city. With the number of monsters as his command, Yoshihiro could dominate what was left of Tokyo, maybe even Japan. But then, that would create problems with other countries, the United States, China, maybe even Russia, and any of those nations had weapons that he couldn't stop.

Or rather, he could, but only a few at a time. When you're trying to concentrate on stopping runaway fusion reactions, you really don't need to be doing it on multiple weapons at once. And once you got above ten or so nuclear weapons dropping down on you, things got really dicey. And for what he was going to do, Yoshihiro fully expected that nations would inundate Japan with nuclear weapons in an effort to secure the continued existance of the planet. Sure, it might irradiate half the globe for the next 4.5 thousand million years, but to save the world? To continue human existance? They'd do that and more to stop him.

So he had to be good. Act nicely. His more twitchy monsters he sent out in small groups, ordered to hide in shadows and prey on those weak and lost, alone and abused. There were plenty of these people. No one would miss those who had fallen beneath the cracks, especially in a nation wounded by nuclear terrorism.

Strange, he thought; that the world, horrified by what the media claimed was a nuclear device in Tokyo (and what the United States, Russian and Chinese governments claimed showed no radiation signature of such a weapon and had to be some other exotic weapon) would condone the use of such weapons again, in the same place, if circumstances dictated it. Or called for it, using less-strong language. Euphemisms, euphemisms all.

But acting nicely... it chafed. Chafed like that bad underwear sweaty Taro wore down in the gym level of their otherwordly base, so irritating his skin he occasionally felt he had to tear himself open, lay himself bare for all to see the darkness that beat within. He was no hero. He was no salaryman. He was evil, pure, carnal knowledges burned into the neural pathways of a laticework structure of matt black crystal. No light shone from within. Any mercy he had shown his enemies, even his allies, came more from fear.

Yoshihiro had no problem admitting he feared. Fear was very much a protector. His human ancestors had rightly feared large animals, the carnivores that had stalked the plains in Africa, and had risen to power. His Dark Kingdom ancestors... well, had been stupid. They had not feared enough, and had been driven almost to extinction by a predator. The battle had already been lost when Serenity had absorbed Nemesis into the light of the Moon Kingdom, and everything since had been a readguard action. The taking of Mercury. The destruction of Mars. The disruption of the other worlds. Metallia had known the Dark Kingdom would be sealed, that it would lose its strength. Beryl had rallied against that, and all she had managed to do was delay the final confrontation of the two kingdoms. Thankfully, she had made things as close to even as she could have, which made Yoshihiro's job a little easier.

Fighting against an entire solar system would have taken resources he just didn't have. So thankfully, he didn't have to. He just had to fight ten women, and one altersexual, to contend with.

Which led, again, to the fear.

Was he really good enough to do this? To Umiko and the others, he projected strength, unity, determination. To them, it was unthinkable he could lose. And yet, strong as he was, powerful as he was, endowed as he was, he was mortal. He had learned from the lessons of Beryl, Wiseman, Galaxia and the others, and simply did not want to fall to the same mistakes, problems and misconceptions they had. He did not underestimate the senshi. In fact, if anything, he tried to overestimate them, estimated their impact in his plans to possibly be much more than it ended up being. Whereas Beryl's Generals had created one, maybe two monsters at a time, Yoshihiro created ten. And then ten more. And when he made his next ten, his first were also making more monsters. Within a short space of time, he had himself an army that he could use to accomplish his means. A thousand monsters, in an otherdimensional section of sewers. Hiding out, fearing the senshi finding him before he was ready. Staging minor attacks, just enough to keep their attention while he worked his magic. His goal, grandiose as it was, was to get the Dark Kingdom's final revenge on the Moon Kingdom by exterminating every piece of life on Earth through the unsealing of the Dark Kingdom proper. To do that, he had employed misdirection. Random attacks, monsters unable to conform to the strict missions he had ordered, the assassinations, the jockeying for power in governmental circles he had had to pull together. He had been broke, as the eBay Japan encounter had shown him, and he had worked hard to find more money. Bank raids, theft of electronic funds, ransoms...

Thankfully, it had all come together. Ultimately, he was powerful because he planned ahead. He knew what was to come. He knew the way things would go, because he would make them go that way. People would try to flee their fate, but it had all been accounted for.

Apart, of course, for the nuclear weapons.

Beside his hand were a collection of carefully-labelled manila folders. Inside were photographs, sketches, maps, plans, contingency plans, time tables, pie graphs and overhead transparancies; the reports collected from his agents were his main protection. If something happened, he could react to it with any of a possible half dozen backup plans. Even if, somehow, the senshi escaped from the system contained within his new battleship, he knew what he could do. There was no conceivable series of events that Yoshihiro hadn't developed contingencies for.

He was invincible to the senshi. Now, if those nations with high-explosive weapons would just hold off a little more, until he had the dimensional barrier field up around Tokyo, he'd be fine.

Which reminded him, he had a dimensional barrier to set up... thankfully, that was just a by-product of the ship's engines coming online, and that was scheduled to happen in maybe six weeks, which was long before anyone might consider him a threat.

Whistling to himself, he stood, and headed out of his throne room, momentarily happy.

XXXXXX

Kenichi swore. The urges within him were rising once again. He knew that meant that animal Umiko was around. But if she was an animal, a monster, what did that make him?

It was his day off, and he was trying to relax, deny the powerful motivations that now ran through his body like electrical impulses on a computer network. While his body may no longer have been quite his own, his mind definitely was. This was murder, but the bare skeletal fingers of denuded trees reaching for the skies through the slowly arriving spring melt made him feel somehow at home. Somehow. Maybe the thought of death. Although he couldn't pull the trigger on his gun when he held the cool metal ring of the barrel against his temple, death still dominated his days and nights. When his altered hormones weren't calling for sex with Umiko, of course, in which case his lust for death and destruction grew exponentially. He had already found that sex with human women did little to satiate his lusts, and one such attempt had almost resulted in a dead late-twentysomething on the prowl for a man before she hit thirty.

She had thought herself, although desperate, at the top of the food chain. She hadn't counted on meeting something much, much higher that fateful night. She'd wear the scars of their encounter for a long time yet.

Kenichi hoped that she wouldn't become like him, that this disease within him wasn't like lycanthropy or vampirism or any of the other various western monsters that seem to transfer the curses that make them by touch, bite or scratch. He really hoped that was the case, because he hated this life, and would have just given up all hope of finding a way out of this if he found he was making other monsters. Other beasts.

He laughed aloud, and the noise sounded hollow, like he wasn't quite there. The wind blew above him, shaking several nearby branches. He noticed blossoms on the trees, green buds of leaves coming through for spring. Where was he? Outside a shrine, indeed, but he didn't recognise the area. Definitely one of the lesser-affected regions of Tokyo, although saying that was like comparing ground zero at Hiroshima with a street two blocks away some sixty years earlier: all of Tokyo was affected, and if it wasn't a physical scar a region bore, it was a psychological one.

That had to be one reason that bastard's message was being received so well... he was building the Japanese spirit back up, doing what politicians should have been doing... what Kenichi's own boss should have been doing, not leaving the rebuilding of a people's heart and soul to the developers that came to pick the bones of the corpse.

A clear bell sounded, and Kenichi stopped suddenly, looking up. Above the shrine's entrance torii was a tall tree, and on one of the branches stood a woman. She held her left arm out stiff, perpendicular to her vertical body, fingers poised as if clutching something. He saw no bell in evidence, but the clear monotone of its single toll lingered for a few more moments yet.

"Events move to a head," she said from the tree. It was strange how her long brown hair wasn't tangled in any of the branches around her position. Somehow, her strange appearance gave Kenichi the idea that she may have been a hallucination of his brain, something akin to a conscience. In that case, the question was, should he reply? Could this be that monstrous bitch playing with his head again, some method of drawing him ever closer to whatever she ultimately wanted him to do?

No. Something felt wrong about this. If this wasn't real, it was something in his head, from his head, for reasons other than bloodlust. "Yes," he replied cautiously.

"Faster," she added, after a moment. Her arm dropped back to her side.

"What was that bell? Was it yours?"

"Once," she replied, a faint smile on her lips. "Now, it, like your humanity, is a memory."

"You know." An accusatory tone. Unbidden, but underlying his words like a snake in the grass: threat backed by power.

"I know many things," she admitted to Kenichi, "and continue to know things. Not everything one sees is what comes to be. Sometimes, people see dreams, hopes, fears, and picture them as reality. As long as people think something is impossible... as long as people think their darker dreams are reality, the world will be a dark place where angels fear to tread."

"Do you really believe in angels?"

"Don't you?"

Kenichi held her gaze a moment, then broke eye contact, his gaze sweeping the ground before him as he shook his head. "No. Once, maybe. But not now. I have seen too much. I have experienced too much. and now, I have... become too much. I know angels do not exist, only varying levels of monsters. Angels are things of myth, of legend, designed to make people feel safe against monsters they can't stop."

The woman smiled a private smile. "Perhaps. Or perhaps there are angels, and they do stop monsters. Maybe rather than becoming a monster, you are being forced to kill angels?"

"No such thing as angels."

"Yet no doubt, even with Gojira and the others, and with the occasional catastrophe to hit Tokyo, you believe in their opposite."

"Monsters. Yes. I can see them."

"And you can't see angels?"

"Can you?"

Again, she smiled a private smile, as if she knew something. The urge to kill rose in Kenichi, and it was harder to hold back. But her words were free of amusement or humour. "I have had dealings with angels before. They're just more secretive than monsters. Monsters are agents of chaos, angels of order; one is more powerful when in the open, the other more at home with remaining unseen."

"What do you -" Kenichi started asking, but only a breeze fluttered through where she had stood when he looked up. Nothing. She wasn't there anymore. He looked wildly around, but couldn't see anyone else.

On the wind, he heard a single toll of a quiet bell.

XXXXXX

Kaname let her mind empty, and she found her happy place. Lying in the bath of her old apartment, tights hanging over a rickety chair, steam rising up from the heated water in the otherwise freezing room, Kaname sunk with just her nose clearing the wate's surface to breathe. The gentle lapping waves rippling across her breasts, the pressure against movement of her limbs, the incredible warmth of the water caressing her skin. Her happy place, where she felt safe, warm, and for some unknown, possibly pre-natal reason, loved. The loneliness of those baths never seemed to register on her mind when she did this.

She had gotten much better in relaxing. She wasn't as good as Ranma, apparently, but was getting better all the time. She could do what he wanted, when she wanted, if she could just focus. And she had spent the last week and a half focussing and teaching the others to focus. She led by example, and now, she stood in front of the others, Nemesis opposite her, standing loosely.

"Remember," Kaname heard herself say distantly, "the snow and ice is melting and it will be slippery. In addition," and now Kaname gestured at a series of half-metre high wooden stakes pounded into the ground, "I'll only be up on these, while you can either try this out or go on the ground or a mixture of both. I fail automatically if any part of me touches the ground. You win if you can knock me out, knock me out of the ring so I touch any object outside of the ring, knock me to the ground or break a bone."

"Can we use our magical attacks?" Nemesis asked, looking up at Kaname through her fringe.

"Of course. A soldier uses everything at their disposal. A soldier fighting a war doesn't tie their hands behind their backs and hopes the enemy won't shoot in their direction." Kaname seemed surprised by the question, but flexed her toes around the stakes beneath her bare feet regardless, readying herself for the first strike. The impromptu arena was 30 metres in all directions except upwards and downwards - Kaname couldn't go down, and there was no upper limit to their battle except what either could stand.

"You didn't mention what circumstances you win under," Mercury pointed out from the sidelines.

"That's because this keeps going until I lose," Kaname replied. "I'm not as good as Ranma is, but I can put up a bit of a fight... and at times, I have done... scary things. The idea here is that I've got to teach you how to do what I do. And I'm not a very good teacher..."

"Ranma wasn't either," Sailor Moon chuckled from beside Mercury, who shushed her. "But he wasn't!"

"I think you're all intelligent," Kaname reminded. "You're all soldiers, and you learn by watching your enemies... I want you to try and learn by watching me. I don't know if it'll work, but for now, that's all I can think that might work. Simply because you're all intelligent women, and I fail to believe there's something I can do that all of you can't. There's nothing special about me, or as I can tell, Ranma, so why can we do this while you can't? Sure, we're more skilled martial arts-wise, but that can't be it all. There are other martial artists here, now, who haven't yet shown any ability to do what I have, so I'm certain it can't be martial arts. It has to be something else, and I don't know. So watch. Watch, and do whatever I do that isn't what I usually do, because that's probably it."

With her eyes closed, controlling her breathing, Kaname didn't see Saturn fold her arms and roll her eyes, but she did sense her attention drift. Carelessly, she fingered her Silence Glaive, feeling the dense stellar material's energy patterns twist and writh under the caress of her fingertips. Kaname felt that, as she felt Sailor Moon's attention focus in tighter on her, Sailor Mars eyeing the placement of her feet on the stakes, Sailor Jupiter noting the position of her arms in a loose position beside her body, able to be brought up into a variety of attack and defense postures almost instantly. Others took note of Nemesis, and the way that, even standing still, she looked like a bull pawing at the earth with a hoof.

"Let's begin."

The words were simple, but Nemesis let out a low growl and bounced forward. Her feet kicked up divots from the surface and she leaned forward into the motion, swinging a graviton-charged fist up as she came. "Gravity punch!" Kaname danced sideways, her feet barely moving yet her body seemed to simply flow around the punch that sucked at her clothing. Winds whipped around Kaname's shirt, and after a moment's exposure the material gave way and sucked itself into Nemesis' fist, leaving half of Kaname's torso exposed. Kaname similarly flowed around the extended arm and brought her elbow down on the forearm with force, knocking Nemesis off-balance.

The senshi stagged forward a few steps before she could arrest her forward momentum and spun around, hands already coming up. "Richter wave!" A spiral blast of heavy gravitons blasted out at Kaname, but she simply bent backwards at the knees and the wave passed over her. More of her clothing tore, this time as the wave thrust her in the direction of attack's propagation. Again, she seemed not to notice, and instead spun around impossibly on one leg while still bent low. At the end of her swing, her hands reached out and grabbed a stake at the extent of her reach, and she bent up and over, swinging her legs down over Nemesis' shoulders and ramming her knees hard into the woman.

Nemesis staggered under the force of the blow, amazed at Kaname's flexibility as well as the power behind the attack. The senshi who weren't still scrambling to avoid the incoming richter wave in the half-second since the attack had been fired were staring, amazed, at Kaname's speed and power. She had never demonstrated anything like this...

... except perhaps when Ranma was in the mental driving seat, when he had been fighting Agent Sato of the Government Office for Trade and Tariffs in recent months. Then, Kaname moved like nothing they'd ever seen.

Punches and kicks followed, Nemesis trying to best Kaname through speed and strength. That didn't work, as Kaname bent in almost impossible contortions as soon as Nemesis signposted moves. And she was like water, forever flowing from one position to the next. When that failed, Nemesis began smashing the stakes, leaving Kaname a scant handful to stand on.

Saturn thought that was a bit stupid, seeing as even Nemesis knew Ranma, and by extension Kaname, knew how to fly, but she held her tongue while watching intently.

Eventually, Nemesis left Kaname a single stake to fight on, and the senshi's fists and feet blurred faster and faster. Kaname guessed she had continued trying pick chestnuts out of fires, and as a senshi, her flesh wasn't as easily touched by flame as non-magically-enhanced skin was. Consequently, Nemesis had been developing her speed, and that was being reflected in her movements in general. The older senshi thought she had the upper hand, with magical attacks as well as physical, but Kaname still managed to dodge every punch, every kick, every localised collapsar sent her way, and the redirection of Nemesis' attacks simply made the senshi angrier.

Of course, since losing her temper was the easiest way Kaname would win, Nemesis tried to hold it back. But the figurative cup in her mind was overflowing from the many varied thoughts of those inside her, and holding control was growing ever more taxing on the young woman.

For half an hour, the action went on. And despite the speeds the two combatants were moving at, neither showed signs of tiring. In fact, in the few moments she was still, Kaname could occasionally be seen flicking her eyes to her digital watch worriedly. Whether she was worried about timing, or the fact the day was starting to drag on, or she was tiring in ways no one could see, no one could tell. But eventually, Nemesis tired of the fight.

She leaped back a few metres, brought her open hands together, palms forward, with a diamond-shaped space in between them. "Reverse Lagrange!"

Something burst from Nemesis' hands, but Kaname didn't know what. It wasn't something she could see, but rather, something she felt. Like being caught in a rip at the beach, her brain felt pulled in many different directions, personalities existant in her head splitting apart. Weirdly enough, she could see them. Ranma, herself with bright scarlet hair dressed as one of the senshi, Ranma dressed in a black suit, like a school uniform but more reminiscent of a darker aspect of himself, and she guessed her own self. They all seemed to lean different ways at the knees as Nemesis threw a punch, and then came back to much the same standing position, ready to prove himself, ready to defend, ready to fight, ready to teach. Taking all four urges at once, Kaname leaped up, and for one instant, she could feel the background code of the system. She grabbed it with one hand, twisted it in her favour, and with a sensation similar to being spun in a washing machine, she struck out with a calculated kick.

It caught Nemesis in the chest, snapping her backwards off the hilltop. Kaname dropped back to the single stake, arms spread wide to centre herself while her bodies seemed to flow back into one contiguous whole. Nemesis crashed to earth half a kilometre away, two hundred metres downwards. There was silence from the senshi. Then Mars clapped. Makoto, impressed, did likewise. Kaname blushed, but Sailor Moon gave her a weird look before nodding. "I think we can say that was a win," Sailor Moon said after a moment of searching.

Kaname's flush deepened. "Uh... I'm... sorry and..." and then something changed. Kaname's posture changed from the surprised and shocked woman there a moment ago to a more upright, confident woman unconcerned about her shape. "She'll be fine, though. I think." There was an inarticulate roar from the distance. "Oh look," said Ranma, "she's already up and about."

His eye scanned the skies, but that wasn't his primary sense. Instead, he reached out and felt for Nemesis' energy, or what modelled it in the system. Once he found it, he knew what was going on with her. Barrelling down from the skies, Nemesis smashed into the remaining stake with a impact of a large car dropped from height. The front yard of the dorm cratered, dirt blasting out and covering the senshi as well as the building. Supersharp splinters of the last stake exploded into superhard exposed flesh, creating the sensation for the assembled people of being bitten by hundreds of invisible ants. At the base of the bowl-shaped depression, Nemesis crouched, angry as anything.

"C'mon, Kari," Ranma said, from the rooftop. "You can do better than that." With a cheeky, grin, he was off, loping an easy gait off the mountaintop, dropping in freefall to the road below. The crunch of the simulated ancient stone roadway confirmed to Ranma what he had felt through other means, and he smiled. They bounded, off rooftops and walkways, through railway tunnels and underpasses, into and out of industrial and construction areas, Nemesis always just a bit too slow to catch Ranma, the senshi growing angrier and angrier the longer the chase continued. Ranma led her on a merry chase from the city, leaving people far behind, until they reached the vacant flanks of Fuji, where Ranma stopped, turned.

"Here, Kari. If ya wanna do somethin' ta me, ya do it here." Ranma pointed with a finger, cut a line into the ground with ki. "But first, you gotta step over that line." He stepped back a few steps, and then folded his arms.

Nemesis growled again, stalked forward, but slowed and hesitated just before the line. She looked down at it, then hissed up at Ranma. "You think you know everything," she threw at him.

"Right now, I kinda do," Ranma replied, airily. "I know I can take you. And I knew you needed this release. It's not violent enough for you at the moment, and your medications aren't working right, are they?"

Nemesis shook her head curtly.

"And you're all trying to be good girls and boys," Ranma continued, looking thoughtfully into the sky, turning his back on Nemesis. "I understand. And I understand your need to fight. To prove yourself. To defend others, even if the others don't wanna be defended," he tagged on to the end.

"That's... true..."

"And you're that part of Mitsuki that thinks the best defence is a good offence, right?"

There was a big pause. Nemesis said nothing. She refused to say anything. Her cheeks burned and her vision blurred, and rather than stare at Ranma's back, she turned away.

Ranma glanced casually over his shoulder. "That is right, isn't it?"

Nemesis shook her head. "It is." She sounded hollow.

"So, c'mon, let's get this going. We're all alone, no one can disturb us, you can work off your frustrations on me." Ranma turned back to face her then, taking up a confident pose, ready for Nemesis to launch herself at him. Instead, Mitsuki was walking down the side of the volcano, heading for Tokyo. "Kari? Mitsuki?"

"Just go home, Ranma." The voice was tired, flat, devoid of the life and anger that had been held by it only a few moments ago.

Ranma, confused, reached out, then thought the better of it, and left for home.

Mitsuki looked up and sighed. "It is only if you think it is," she murmured sadly, before continuing her trek home.

XXXXXX

Tokyo felt ominous. He felt it. Could feel it deep within his bones. Something was stirring, within him, uncoiling like a rope.

Or a snake.

Hidden from the world, that piece of him that would always be blackness and blank to his conscious mind unfurled and drank in the sensation of evil, the aftertaste of death and destruction. He understood it wasn't something that was natural; or, at least, something that hadn't always been natural. It was something pushed into it, bound into the metagenetical makeup of the essence, a trillion years of hated forced evolution. Unlike the irrational hatreds he was often in the grip of, this was a coldly rational hatred. Blinding with the sensation of it, and pushing towards irrational acts and revenge, yet rational all the same.

Yet, he found that now, unlike a time previous, the hatred and anger did not rule his life. It no longer dominated his destiny, turning him into an internal orgy of sex and violence that he feared he had been becoming. In all, he was now a better person for exploring the dark side of his personality - he knew it existed, he accepted its existance, and he had beaten it. With some help, but he had beaten it.

Likewise, his companion had also been through a similar experience. The outcome with his companion had been more of a sure thing, but with him... it had been in the balance.

The dorm building at Kanagawa seemed to be full of life. The city behind them was in mourning; the simple constructions here, melting snow heaped up around them, uncleared during winter, was in expectation of a return. He could feel it. He felt it, like everyone else here could feel it.

"It feels... like it's waiting," one of the women behind him said. "For heroes." She said the last word uncomfortably, as if it was language she wasn't used to using. The word sounded alien, the way it was spoken.

"Ummm... it's much nicer than ours," another said from back behind the others.

"They have a manager who looks after the place, isn't that right, Keitaro?" yet another said. Yet, where once it would have been spoken in anger, now it was more wry than abusive. Perhaps that was because his companion had her fingers locked tightly through his.

"Maybe," he replied, distantly, stretching out with his mind. He could feel presences here that the thing in his mind recoiled from. A quick glance to his side showed Naru also felt the same thing. Seeing as he was the monster who had turned her, and she had been the weaker of the two, his reaction was the much stronger of the two, but she could also feel their pasts hiding. "They're still here... somewhere..."

"I cannot sense anyone nearby," the first woman added cautiously, looking about. "I sense nothing but us here."

"That makes what we have to do even more difficult."

"Idiot."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Keitaro commented to Naru from the side of his mouth.

"We do it like we were planning to. Something's coming, right?" she asked. "It should even penetrate your brain that somehow, we know when whatever is going on is going to happen."

Keitaro's mouth ran dry. He hadn't thought of that, but he knew. He could feel it, just like Naru said, hovering on the edge of consciousness. Instinctively, he knew it would let him know when something happened, but it had taken Narusegawa to bring it to his attention. Typical. He'd been locked up in his own world and forgetting others also experienced some of the things he did. "You're right," he breathed. "Thank you."

"So where are the magical girls?" Kaolla asked.

"Ummm..."

"Where's Hotaru? I wanna play with her this time!"

"What? Oh, the school -"

"I've got a whole bunch of new toys I can't wait to try out!"

"Su!"

The young foreigner stopped bouncing around, and stared at Keitaro. "Yes?" All innocence below the playful eyes.

"How would you like to fight a supervillian?"

That idea appealed. "Yesssss!" she squealed.

XXXXXX

Ranma's training of the senshi faltered for a few days. Mitsuki wasn't that receptive to his training, and the others, sensing something had happened on the way to and from their aborted sparring match, mostly left the subject alone. All continued training, but Ranma, preoccupied, didn't concern himself with the day to day details of who would spar with whom, nor with paying much attention to katas, style and skill. Instead, he was distracted, often to be found focussing himself on turning a chunk of rock into a sculpture.

And yet, he felt no accomplishment from these actions, either. He knew that, no matter what he did, this wasn't a real world. Even if they could find a way to bring everyone back to the real world, Ranma knew that likely it would only be the people. It would be like nothing had changed, apart from the missing time they'd been in the system. Maybe even Tokyo itself would be destroyed; he couldn't say. But ultimately, nothing he did here beyond stopping the extermination of some millions of people would be of any consequence.

So, the rock art did nothing to abate his mood or help solve his confusion. The few hesitant times he started to say something to Mitsuki, she rebuffed his attempts at conversation. Hotaru's eyes seemed to follow him everywhere, and the constant hugging, the occasional, distracted kissing, the hesitant blossoming anew of their physical relationship did nothing to help matters. He needed to talk to Mitsuki. He needed to know what was going on between them. He could feel it now, tugging at him. Like he was some kind of rogue planet, dipping in and out of the solar system, swinging around two planets that (he now realised) wanted him equally. And while he was determined to stay with one, the other was confusing his life enough that he would orbit dangerously close to the other from time to time. It was something he couldn't help, something he couldn't understand, but something that he wanted to help, had to understand. He knew that, but to get that vital last piece of the puzzle, he needed to talk to Mitsuki without her doping herself on her medication or finding cause to be elsewhere.

After training on the fourth morning, Ranma's problems seemed to be going. He could feel Kaname, behind his eyes, watching curiously, yet silently. Whatever was going on, he felt she knew. Probably better than him, but she was the female side to his ego, unbound by his personality and drives, and so that was to be expected. At least she wasn't laughing at him, but then, she wasn't handing the answer to him, either.

"Class dismissed," he finished, and grabbed a towel after the others had taken them and most had retreated to the springs out the back. The ground was damp, snow melting and slowly turning exposed dirt into mud. And, considering the fact the senshi practised super-powered martial arts on this stretch of lawn every morning, there was an awful lot of exposed earth.

As he turned to face out towards the ocean, he realised Hotaru was standing before him. "Sempai," she offered in a tone that belied the pleasant expression on her face.

"Hotaru-chan," he replied, toweling sweat from his brow and neck after a moment's hesitation.

"We have to talk."

"I thought that's what we were doing, but okay."

"I mean, not here. Somewhere else."

"Where did you have in mind?"

So that was how, half an hour later, Ranma found himself digging in his pocket for some money for the theatre clerk. "I don't know why we've got to see a Pocket Monster movie," he grumbled. Not enough money. He glanced up under his bright red fringe at the attendant: a young teenaged boy, face covered in pimples. Inwardly, he sighed. Outwardly, he giggled, grabbed a surprised Hotaru's arm, pressing his ample bosom against her until Ranma's front engulfed her shoulder like it hadn't eaten in months, kissed her on the cheek, and before Hotaru's surprise could turn into a warm melt into his side and possibly ruin any chance hope of the ensuing conversation making much sense, he pulled back and giggled coquettishly at the clerk. "Hiiiiii, would you mind if we go in there?" she asked, pointing flirtaceously and pulling Hotaru's arm so the younger woman collapsed into Ranma's side. The clerk's face lit up brightly with blood, and he made some kind of what Ranma guessed was supposed to be a chivalrous gesture, but instead was little more than a leer with his hand as he gestured towards the doors. Ranma simpered, realising with some surprise this had been the first time in a long time he'd used his female body to its fullest, most natural advantage over others. He half-dragged the surprised Hotaru past the attendant and through the doors, into the darkness, but once inside, she took over, guided him to an isolated pair of chairs where she waited until he sat before she did.

"No one else will be here, not at the moment," Hotaru replied to Ranma's original question. "And we have to talk. Be alone."

"Why?" Ranma asked. "What do we have to talk about?"

"Us. Us, Ranma. And this whole 'Dark General' thing you've had going."

"Oh. Oooohh..." Ranma repeated as realisation hit. "It's just... power. Stronger than I have experienced before, deeper in my body. It felt like -"

"Like?" Hotaru prompted.

"When I was that Sailor girl. Um, Ceres."

"But how was it different?"

"As Ceres, I had... urges. Like voices. Telling me... telling me that it was my duty to rule the world. That it was my destiny. That everything in Tokyo would be shining towers and healthy lives."

"And the rest of the world?"

"In decline. Dead, dying, degenerate. Frozen. But I was being told that wasn't my destiny to help those people. Just those who lived in Tokyo and served..."

"Served?"

"I don't know. It was just feeling. Urges. An overwhelming force of future history. And an overwhelming sense something ain't right about that state of affairs." He folded his arms and pouted darkly. "It was wrong."

"And as this monstrous General persona?"

Ranma shrugged, growing thoughtful now. "It wasn't... evil. It encouraged... revenge. Vengeance. For things long in the past. Possibly dead things now."

"How could it not be evil?" Hotaru asked, her arm shifting inside the crook of his arm.

"Remember a few weeks before we came here?" Ranma asked, seemingly changing the subject. "Usagi was telling me, under duress, some of the things that had happened to you guys while we'd been fighting together that I didn't know about? Like... well, like those dreams she had she thought were important."

"I remember."

"Then you remember there was one thing the Queen said to her? 'Two sides of the one coin, with Earth as the edge that joins them together'." Ranma turned to face Hotaru. "That's stuck with me since. I kinda understand it. It's the positive and the negative joined together. Once can't exist without the other. The past is chaos, the future is order, and one's no good without at least a little of the other."

"Why do you say that?"

"I dunno. I just think that, y'know?" Ranma shifted, uncomfortably. "Being... a monster, a General, was a rush. Completely. I didn't feel like I had to worry about other people, I could concentrate on the task at hand because I didn' have ta worry about... collateral damage. I did, though. That's my personality."

"I didn't think personality had anything to do with evil."

"It's not... evil. It's... different."

"It's not different. It's evil. We know this. This is what we dedicate our lives to fighting. It's evil."

Ranma gently unhooked his arm from Hotaru's. "That's your point of view."

"They kill people!"

"And you don't?" Ranma asked, before Hotaru could say anything else. "Hotaru, I'm not saying it's right, but you're both fighting the same way almost. They are about to kill people in the billions, but 'til now, they haven't. Up until that big monster in Minato, we killed just as many as they killed almost. Almost. And until it was brought to your attention, you and your friends killed without remorse, without wondering if there was some way you could save these people. And even then, Ami only gave some half-hearted attempts after Keitaro was saved. No one's asked me about me much; and I'm worse than Keitaro ever was... I could be more powerful than Natsumi if I wanted ta be." He shrugged. "They're no more evil than you are. They do things differently, they live different, and they've been shaped differently... but you will both do anything - ANYTHING - if it will bring about a situation you feel is worth it."

"That's not -" Hotaru started, but Ranma continued.

"Yoshihiro will sacrifice every human, animal and plant on Earth to unseal his world. Would Sailor Moon do the same?"

"You know she wouldn't," Hotaru replied, daggers growing in her eyes.

"Do I? I know she'd think she'd save everyone. Save all life on Earth, and bring the Moon Kingdom back into existance. But if it was an either-or situation, like Yoshihiro seems to be confronted with, I think she'd be torn."

"Billions of lives currently alive on Earth against hundreds of billions of dead? I don't think that's much of a choice, Ranma."

Ranma sighed. "That's an evasive answer, Hotaru. Very evasive. Which would you choose?"

Hotaru ducked her head and bit her tongue. While part of her had been born on Earth, an equal part of her had grown up defending the Moon Kingdom from threats to its security. She found, as she gave a moment's thought to the question, that she hadn't been too certain as to which answer she'd have given. "Of course I'd have said defend... Earth."

"As a resident of Earth, and only of Earth, I don't like the implications of that hesitation."

"Well, what do you expect?" Hotaru shouted suddenly, going on the offensive. "You accuse me of wanting to destroy the world! You accuse me of not caring about... about everyone! I do! I do care! When I was young, I never used to, but dammit Ranma, I've changed! Chibiusa did a lot for me there, and so did Usagi, but it was Usagi who saved me from destroying the Earth - twice! I'm Sailor Saturn, senshi of death and rebirth, and my task was to defend the Moon Kingdom against anything - ANYTHING - and that includes the threat to the Moon Kingdom and surviving royalty from Earth and the Dark Kingdom. That means Usagi. If Usagi wants to destroy the Earth, then it's not my place to question. That's where my loyalties lie."

"Thank you for the honest answer, Hotaru," Ranma said, eventually, gravely. "That puts another piece in the puzzle."

"What puzzle?"

Ranma gave a mysterious, suddenly impish grin, and shook his head. "I've got some secrets too, remember," he said after a moment. Then, things began to tunnel around him, and he knew his time was up again, for however long. "And they can wait for a while," he said before he was gone. Kaname remained in his place, starting and looking around in mild surprise.

"That is so disorientating," she grumbled to Hotaru, before realising the younger woman looked ready to explode. "Uh... have I come at a bad time?"

"No," the younger girl managed after a few minutes. "He infuriates me."

"Ranma?" Kaname asked, puzzled. "I thought he was your, you know, boyfriend."

"He is."

"Things aren't going well?" Kaname hazarded.

"I don't see things as he sees them."

"How does he see them?" Kaname asked.

"Differently," Hotaru replied, letting go of a breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding. She seemed to deflate back into her cinema chair while Pikachu blasted some rocks apart on the screen, covering her in flashes of neon yellow lightning. "I know he sees things differently. I've had proof of it in the past. But I thought he agreed with our aims. Our goals."

"Which are?"

"The destruction of the Dark Kingdom. Bringing a halt to this million years-plus war. Recreating the Moon Kingdom. Regenerating our way of life."

"Ranma's opposed to that?"

"Yes."

"Maybe he's not."

"Why do you think that?" A purple eye rolled in Kaname's direction.

"Maybe he's opposed to how that'll affect his world," Kaname replied.

XXXXXX

An idea crouched on the rooftop, staring off at the rapidly lightening horizon. Imaginery light flickered from the primitive masquerading as the sun as it poked its head up above a finite limit, then almost immediately was obscured by thick clouds. While they promised no more snow, they did offer the chance of rain, cleansing the ground of the loose, dirty sludge that was building up as spring approached. The idea laughed, hollowly. That sounded so profound, so like what was going to happen shortly.

Because it had to happen. The idea knew that. It wasn't a personality, just a concept of a personality. Not everyone could be saved, the idea knew that, even if the Real Thing didn't. The Real Thing was an idealist. Even now, it wanted things to be even, be fair, be just, but that wasn't the way things were. For things to happen, people had to die. Idealists were usually the first to die. The question was, was the Real Thing really an idealist? Or was it something else, something that was cunning, planning for survival of those most important to it here? Honestly, it didn't know. It could be a third option, one that suggested it was simply struggling to make sense out of what it had been thrown into without warning or permission. And the more the idea considered, there were more options, a fourth, a seventh, a thirty-third...

The list would only grow. The idea stopped thinking, and let the chill breeze that preceded the rains to flow over it. It felt nice, reassuring, although it was biting and cruel. It anchored the idea in its reality, this jumbled world of paradoxes and expert systems, flowcharts and conceptual schemas given form and thought. Its reality. The world it lived in. Like The World, even down to people pretending desperately it was real.

And perhaps that was the problem. Like The World, this system modelled the real world to the point it was hard to tell the difference. You shouldn't have physical sensation in computer games, but in The World, you could touch other people. You could smell other people. If you were so inclined, you could taste other people.

The idea contemplated that this was very much an approximation. Bark didn't feel like bark. Snow wasn't as cold as snow. Cold soggy cheap ramen didn't quite taste like cold soggy cheap ramen. Everything was just slightly different, as the game told your brain you were feeling these things, but the subconscious was yelling that you weren't. And that was what the system was like. Everything was right, everything was correct, but there was a discontinuity in the experience of sensation that was caused by the brain shortcircuiting memory. It wasn't right. It was all wrong because it was so right.

And that was the crux of the problem. The idea couldn't see why few people could see this was true. Everything was so right. Everything was so exact, right down to the grains of salt in kitchens, right down to lichens and mosses growing in dark, damp places, right down to almost individual cells in the human body.

Almost. The idea thought that perhaps bodies weren't as well-organised or imagined as everything else. Perhaps they were a really good visual model with limited statistics, a personality graft and an ego. Or perhaps not. The idea didn't know. What it did know was that below, the house was stirring. People were waking. Or rather, not people but concepts and code. That was what the idea was finding worrying. Since she had started swapping places with the Real Thing, she had gained his abilities, and his new vision. She thought, privately, that this would only last as long as the system did, but regardless, she could see in numbers, statistics, colour-shaded values... everything was so strange and new, yet so comfortable and old. And still, Kaname had a choice to make.

XXXXXX

Makoto heard feet land lightly outside the kitchen window, and she saw Ranma's back as he stalked off. Or, rather, the way Ranma was walking, Makoto realised Kaname was back. She walked slightly less aggressive than Ranma did, she noticed, with more of a roll to her hips. Makoto didn't know what it was, whether it was perceptual or real, but the feel of the action seemed so personal to the other persona that she attached it to Kaname. It was almost time for training, and the senshi were stirring. Hotaru had seemed upset when she'd come home, Ranma had ghosted past them all and gone to bed, thoughtful. But Makoto had heard Ranma get up shortly after the last of the senshi had gone to bed and climbed to the roof, and had stayed there all night. When the sun had risen, Ranma had shifted a few times, apparently uncomfortable in thought, and then he'd landed in front of the window. Makoto shrugged. Maybe she should go say something, she thought, but didn't know what. It wasn't something she was terribly good at, words and the whole spilling of feelings thing.

Not good at all. Makoto preferred to act through physical actions. People got a better sense of where they stood with Makoto, or where she was coming from, if she could show them physically. Usually defending them, it seemed, but not always. Someone who'd reminded her of an old upperclassman had asked her to help him shift house; another had had her help him fix his motorcycle, and others had asked her many times to hold boxes, books, bags... the list grew and grew. But it was Makoto's way of trying to say she was friendly. Unfortunately, it didn't often show up as that to other people. Mostly, they thought she was mannish, strong, a violent freak, someone to keep away from unless you needed help of that kind. Usagi, on the other hand, had seen something different, in that simple, cheerful, optimistic way of hers, and had kept talking to Makoto until Makoto had relented and opened up somewhat. But, while she had opened up, she still felt actions were a better indicator of feeling than words.

Why tell someone you would help them in a fight when you could just help them in the fight and let that honesty show?

It was a simplistic approach in its own way, Makoto knew, and thus open to interpretation, and for finer interactions, physicality wasn't that good for discussion purposes. She would have to have someone else go and talk to Kaname, someone quieter, someone nicer, someone less likely to accidentally try and pound her through the ground with an ill-timed pat on the back.

Makoto dried her hands and headed upstairs.

XXXXXX

When Usagi descended the stairs from the dormitory, she found Kaname talking to someone. Who, she didn't immediately recognise, but when the head tilted to look over Kaname's shoulders at her directly, she recognised the sharp calculating cunning behind the eyes.

"Oh, it's you," Nabiki Tendo said. Kaname turned around.

"Usagi? What's up?"

"Makoto said you might need to talk. And, you know, since we talked a bit the other week, I thought..." Usagi's voice trailed off at Nabiki's continuing glare. "Uh, is this a bad time?"

"Not at all, Usagi. Nabiki was just telling me about the fact she's a martial arts master now."

"I didn't think she -"

"I know kung-fu," Nabiki replied.

"Kaname?" Usagi asked, confused.

"She's found, by accident, what I've been trying to teach," Kaname explained to Usagi, stepping out of direct line of sight between herself and Nabiki to include the other in the conversation. "How to visualise what I've been talking about, to change this reality."

"How did she...?"

"How did she figure it out?" Kaname asked rhetorically. She swung her head to look at Nabiki with a piercing gaze. "She says she simply started looking at things. Realising that this world is an artificial construct was the first step. Using her mind to influence it was the next."

"I don't understand," Usagi replied again, feeling as if she was trying to catch up on something important but missing something equally important that was needed to understand it.

"We can demonstrate," Nabiki said suddenly, and Kaname's eyes narrowed. Was that nervousness in there, lurking behind her lashes and intense brow? And if it was, wondered Usagi, what was she nervous about?

"Are you sure -" Kaname started, but Nabiki cut her off.

"I'm up to it. I really know kung-fu." She slid into a ready position, her body fluid as if she'd been learning the arts all her life instead of economics. Kaname obviously noticed that, and returned the pose. Usagi stepped back. Without her even realising, the fight had started. Fists and feet blurred, and Usagi's senses shrank until it seemed like the altercation in front of her was all that existed. Having had experience of the time gate on Pluto, she recognised the sense as time dilation on a local, personal level, yet that didn't make the effect any less unreal than this now. it was like she was watching them in slow motion, yet they were moving as if in a reel of fast film. Moving so fast they left after-images on Usagi's retina, Nabiki and Kaname traded blow for blow, and at the speed they were moving, each punch and kick thrust out a concussive field that started to tear at Usagi's clothing. Strangely, Usagi realised, Nabiki seemed to be a match for everything Kaname did.

And Kaname seemed strangely pleased. She was learning. Learning at an accelerated rate. Ranma could learn a move by watching it, but it still took him time to master it, make it his, counter it, but Kaname was learning and responding on the spot. Even as Nabiki stepped up the speed of her attacks, Kaname began pouring on the energy herself, pushing back on Nabiki. The Tendo woman pushed back again, stepping up her power output and speed, and then Kaname -

XXXXXX

Rei, clearing up outside a small shrine she'd found behind the dorm's walled-off springs, shivered, and ravens that had thus far stayed silent exploded into noisy life, leaping for the skies. She felt the burst of negative energies, the maelstrom that swept out of the valley below them. Again, she shivered; she recognised the pattern behind the energy.

XXXXXX

Anathema, that was how Usagi felt it, even if she didn't know the word. The energy gushing like a flood out of Kaname, visible now as a blasting waveform rising from her feet, caused Usagi to lean forward to try to retain her balance. As Kaname expended more and more power, though, Usagi found it a losing battle. Her feet started digging a furrow backwards as she struggled, but she was finding the dark energy was not just pushing her backwards, it was blinding her.

A quick transformation, and even Sailor Moon was finding it hard to stay in one place. Every time Kaname upped her power level, Nabiki seemed to match it. Yet, Sailor Moon noticed, Nabiki was slowing, her energy was flagging. For all that this normal girl had learnt, the magical amounts of energy she had located and accessed, Nabiki couldn't keep up with Kaname even now. A finaly burst of energy, and the brilliant aural wave withdrew inside Kaname. She looked... different. More aware of her surroundings, her hair jet black.

Usagi sucked in a breath, and with only a scant moment pause for a second thought, she transformed. Kaname didn't notice Sailor Moon readying herself to fight if she started destroying houses - or even looked like she wanted to. But Kaname was still focussed on Nabiki. Sailor Moon could now feel it, deep down, that Nabiki's power was much less than Kaname's, even with all the fancy moves. And if Nabiki was an unskilled (or publicly-unskilled; Sailor Moon suspected that Nabiki had likely had some training in martial arts in her family's dojo at some point, even if she didn't admit to it) fighter and Kaname had some skills (or a lot if she wasn't focussing) and the power of a General behind her, the senshi could - or, rather, would - be immensely powerful again, and be able to stand up to Yoshihiro and his Agents... at least, in the system.

She wasn't stupid enough to believe that would be the same outside in the real world.

Sailor Moon barely registered the arrival of the other senshi, but then, she had started to realise that none of them were needed. The taps and touches and kicks and punches Kaname sent Nabiki's way started getting through her defences. Moving lightning fast avoided the worst of the blows, but they weren't quite fast enough to beat the raw power Kaname was sending Nabiki's way.

And that's when Sailor Moon saw it: Nabiki knew that this system was fake and that knowledge had allowed her to bend the rules. She thought she could change the world, and she did. Kaname on the other hand... or rather, Ranma... had always believed that, and had the benefit of experience and faith. Whereas Nabiki was obviously new to this and taking her time focussing on the task at hand, something in Kaname just knew she could and didn't let trivialities such as nervousness or doubt enter into the equation.

Most of the others gave her a questioning glance; Saturn looked as if a glacier was cooking off inside her head, Nemesis just looked disinterested. Sailor Moon waved them down. For the moment, it was nothing but the sensation of evilness, but no corruption, no decay, no violence apart from the tightly controlled moves of Kaname. Then, again, in the middle of the fight, Nabiki found extra power. She began returning to more of an even keel with Kaname. Both women concentrated now, their moves flying faster and faster, until even Mercury's visor could barely make out anything other than a constant haze of colour. As Nabiki grew more confident, Sailor Moon realised, Nabiki's abilities grew. The system allowed her deeper and deeper access into the substratum of data structures, drawing on artforms Sailor Moon hadn't heard about (but had seen in cheap Hong Kong movies Mamoru occasionally liked to watch on dates), and increased the speed and power she could access. Again, Kaname found herself on the back foot, stepping back a few times to avoid devastating punches and kicks that slammed through reinforced cement walls, the ground, street lights and the like with ease.

Nabiki's form glowed and crackled with power, ki charging through the roof. She fired off energy waves, long beams of laser-light will that sliced through the hillside behind them as Kaname fought and dodged, and Sailor Moon realised with a start that Kaname couldn't beat Nabiki at the moment, she could only avoid. As powerful as Kaname had grown, she fought because she had to... Nabiki fought because she wanted to. And that was also causing a particular amount of difference in their fighting styles.

Kaname blocked a vicious slice with her forearms in an X-position, yet even with this defensive posture, the strike dug her into the ground a few centimetres. Nabiki sprung backwards, to gather her breath and wits about her next attack, obviously showing off and enjoying showing off. "I'll throw the fight if you pay me, Ranma," she said, sounding a little winded.

"She hasn't realised that's not Ranma again," Venus whispered behind Sailor Moon's back.

"I don't need someone ta throw a fight," Kaname replied, her accent surprising Sailor Moon as she drew a weapon.

But what surprised her more was the weapon itself. Ranma's transformation wand, with the Roman symbol for Ceres mounted on the top. "Ceres dirty rock - make up!" Kaname shouted, thrusting it into the air. Grey streamers twirled around Kaname's form, settling into a familiar abbreviated sailor suit in grey trim, although - Sailor Moon noticed - the cut of the uniform was slightly different than the last time Ranma had worn it. The skirt seemed slightly longer, the gloves and boots having some intricate detailing on them, and the jewel in the tiara glowed a vibrant red - the colour of Ranma's girlform's hair, Sailor Moon realised. Sailor Ceres' hair was still a jet black, which gave Sailor Moon another surprise - she was still pumped up as a General.

The fight continued, and this time Sailor Ceres didn't let up. The punches, the kicks, the ki blasts, the speed, the backflips and rolls, Nabiki couldn't dodge or parry all of them. Strikes crept through, and although at one point, she gamely tried pressing ahead, Sailor Ceres quickly put her to rights.

Sailor Moon noted a warm feeling around her ankles, and looked down to see Luna brush past. "I thought Ranma broke that wand," she shouted to the cat over the noise of impacts and mini sonic booms.

Luna's eyes never left Sailor Ceres. "I thought so, too. They must be more durable than we remember." Artemis, appearing beside Luna, nodded his agreement.

"We remember so much, but there is more we're always still remembering," he confirmed. "I'd always thought those wands were awfully too fragile for normal use, and I guess this is why they never broke."

"Especially with Sailor Mars throwing hers at people," Sailor Moon slid in with a quiet sly grin.

"WHAT?" Mars exploded, then, remembering where they were and what was going on, backed down into a simmer. Nemesis placed a hand on her shoulder momentarily, surprising Mars, but the hand was gone again before she could turn to see the expression on the older senshi. 'Was that... have I just been comforted by HER?' Mars wondered, before her attention was grabbed again by the fight.

With the power of both kingdoms behind Sailor Ceres, who won the fight was a moot concept. It became who had the more fun. Once Nabiki realised she couldn't match that last burst of power that had accompanied that last transformation, she had settled into showboating. Sailor Ceres, knowing before that last transformation that she'd already won, went along for the ride. This was what she wanted to teach the others, and the easiest way to teach was to show, then have the students do, and do, and do again until they got it right. But with Kaname the only person in the group who knew how to move and fight like this, she, like Ranma, had been struggling to find a way to show that even the senshi could master moves as she could.

At least in the system.

And here was someone, with no magical abilities, with no major martial arts training, with no magical or technological support, beating a Dark General. Sailor Moon guessed that Nabiki would have been able to beat a senshi as well, judging by the fact that usually, the Generals of the various Dark Kingdom assaults on the Earth were almost stronger than the senshi as a whole, and so Sailor Moon realised now why the various agents they had fought on occasion had been horrifyingly strong and supernaturally fast. Unlike the two in front of her, their power was not beset by doubt of their abilities or concern for others; they were programmed to do their job, and they did it. There was only one of two possibilities for them: outright win or outright failure. Nothing in between was a possible result. Singleminded determination would lead them to continue... but the senshi, they found victories in saving people, in escaping to fight again when better prepared, and in finding ways to victory that didn't necessarily result in a bloodbath.

In fact, the less blood spilt on both sides, the better. Sailor Moon herself had been known to offer herself for the universe from time to time, such was her dedication to making the effort to save everyone, just just the innocent from the depredations of others, but those abusing their power also.

But as she aged, as she saw more of the world, she had begun to doubt the validity of saving everyone. Perhaps some people couldn't be saved, perhaps some should die... some people didn't change. This Yoshihiro was one. The agent constructs in the system were another. And somehow, she suspected, the General Natsumi Otohime was yet a third.

Eventually, Nabiki gave up. Her doubt grew too much, and her moves sloppy, clumsy, weaker. Sailor Ceres also noticed, and began cycling back on her power output. Sailor Moon hadn't realised the ambient temperature had dropped when Kaname had worked up her power to start with, but noticed her goosebumps start disappearing as the temperature raised. Colour leeched back into Ceres' hair, and then her transformation from senshi dropped as well.

"That's... free of charge," Nabiki panted, hands on her knees as she tried to regain her breath.

"You didn't say that last time we had an encounter," Sailor Jupiter muttered.

"Consider this the... service which Ranma paid for," Nabiki continued after a pause. She seemed to be waiting for some kind of reaction from Kaname; instead, all she got was a calloused hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you, Nabiki Tendo," came the grave reply. Sailor Moon looked into her eyes, and saw... barely restrained enthusiasm. This was what she had been waiting for, the means to explaining how to fight the agents, but hadn't been able to elucidate to anyone's satisfaction... or understanding.

Now they knew. Do, or do not. There was no try. Kaname shrugged at her, a gesture Sailor Moon took to mean 'try it yourself'. She turned, slowly, finding Nemesis standing beside her, already moving into position. Sailor Moon, the least physically coordinated of the senshi. If she could manage this feat, the others could also. Kaname's simple faith moved her, hands and feet already moving into the complex dance she had learned from her teacher, with heart if not with skill. Nemesis also moved slowly, and Sailor Moon moved into an opposing move. She didn't think she could do this; and then she remembered Nabiki Tendo's moves, and her opening riposte: she knew kung-fu.

And, somehow, Sailor Moon found she did, too. And tai chi, tae kwon do, karate, some other dangerous words, and, surprisingly enough, something her brain registered as drunken master style. As her brain marvelled at this knowledge, the moves laid out intricately on how to move and countermove, her hands moved now on their own, acting on instinct and years of training not hers. She blocked blows, dodged kicks, staggered around headbutts and split-jumped over charges. Occasionally, she found time and the wonder to return with an attack, and Nemesis did likewise in her moves, each complementing the other with the style and grace they offered in combat, occasionally silent in amazement.

And then they realised, the others were almost standing still. Time for them seemed normal, but everyone else was still reacting to the start of the fight, moving through the air in extreme slow motion. That realisation was enough for them to break the spell, and they collapsed back into the system proper as if flicked there by a rubber band.

Both senshi collapsed to the ground, gasping, eyes wide with surprise as they struggled to catch their breath. They looked up at each other.

"We did it," Nemesis said.

"We did it," Sailor Moon echoed, pulling herself up from the ground. Once upright, she looked at her hands, the thin supple fingers that now held so much more magic in them. She smiled, somewhat surprised with the connection she made between her newfound abilities and Mamoru, whom she hadn't seen in four months.

Surprising, really, she considered. Even before this event, he showed up semi-regularly and they continued on dates... but since the system hijacked everyone from Tokyo and the surrounds, including Tuxedo Kamen, she hadn't seen him. Not really. One glimpsed moment only, and he hadn't seen her. She wondered deep in her heart if he also felt this world was wrong, if he knew what was going on -

"Of course he knows," Kaname said from the middle of the impact crater in the roadway.

Sailor Moon looked up. "How do you -"

Kaname shook her head. "I don't know. And I don't know why he hasn't been by. But Ranma saw him when Ranma was away. And Ranma saw him keeping quiet." Kaname didn't add her personal thoughts based on what Ranma saw. But Sailor Moon made the instinctive step regardless.

"The other knights, the other champions," Sailor Moon realised. "He's standing by them in case something happens to us!"

"I think so, yes," Kaname nodded. The other senshi nodded also, slow nods as they each came to agree with the thought. "Those who were injured, far from home when Raijin struck - I think he is looking after them. He is connected. As you were to your worlds, he is to his as well."

Earth was Endymion's adopted home, Sailor Moon realised, not where he was actually born. But none of the senshi in their previous lives had actually had to have been born on the worlds who names they bore to be connected to them. Most had been born and raised on the Moon, in the Kingdom's primary city, each batch of senshi raised with the next queen-to-be. Except, of course, Pluto, who was eternal and singular in ways Sailor Moon had yet to completely understand. Yet she understood the almost gravitational pull of orbital bodies on their satellite, and that was what Mamoru most definitely was. She hadn't quite realised, but now she nodded, accepting his absence again, yet with a lighter heart on the matter.

"You can all do this," Kaname said to the group as a whole, her eyes moving from one senshi to another. "Powered up or not, you can do this. Whether you're a senshi or a human or a dog or a cat, so long as you can believe you can do this, you can."

"How I defeated those Cybrids," Mercury remembered. "For a life form that had eradicated itself almost perfectly from Mercurian records, I found the information to defeat a little too easily enough."

Nemesis grumbled. "You call the nick of time 'too easy'? Oh, I forget, you weren't the one being thrown around like a rag doll." Mercury shot her a glare that faded after a moment as Kaname continued.

"More to the point, regardless of whether you think ya can do this or not, I know you can. We've seen you beat impossible odds. We've seen you fight back from the pits of despair. We've seen you move mountains, save people, protect the world and everything on it. And we've seen you as people, lost, alone, afraid, doubting - but never defeated. Whatever we think of you and your mission, you have it in you to do good. The world will live and breathe by your actions, and history will record the Moon Kingdom again." Sailor Moon noted Kaname's eyes were unfocussed at the moment, as if she was staring off somewhere else. Sailor Mars saw it as a mild form of possession, and readied herself. Yet whatever was inside Kaname, be it Ranma or some kernel of either side that had taken route in her, did not feel evil to Mars. "The future will bring trouble, hardship, doubt and redemption. It will bring pain and death, destruction and enlightenment. A false idol will rise, and I will not be beside you during this time. It is a test you must face yourselves. And then, in the end, faith and hope will triumph, with the bitter tears of an infant its chorus." The almost-messianic light faded from Kaname's eyes, and she blinked, settling back down onto the flats of her feet as she looked at the senshi.

"What?" she asked. "Whaaaat?"

They had let their transformations drop. Something in Kaname's words had seemed to be for human consumption rather than immortal powerhouses, and one by one they had blurred back into their pyjamas, trackpants and sweatshirts, keenly aware of the cold clammy wetness of the melting snow around their now-bootless feet. And something in their faces, from the awe in Usagi's, to the suspicion in Rei's eyes, to the surprise in Hotaru's, told Kaname she'd missed a very good show. At the very elast, she hoped she'd put one on, with fireworks and spinning heads and floating, but she didn't know. She turned to Nabiki, a question on her lips, but Nabiki was already taking a few steps backwards.

"Don't look at me," she said, holding her hands up almost defensively. "I don't know what's going on. I didn't cause it." Then, as the assembled women behind Kaname turned their stares to lock on to her, Nabiki broke and fled down a side street.

'That took some courage,' Kaname wondered, then turned back to the senshi. Time for explanations. Inwardly, she sighed. It was going to be a long morning.

XXXXXX

Again, the weeks passed in a blurr. But this time, a literal blurr. The senshi trained. They did. Surprisingly, after Sailor Moon and Sailor Nemesis had the skill of eradicating doubt from their hearts, Sailor Mercury was the next to succeed. She had been shown it was possible; therefore she knew if she followed the guidelines Kaname laid down, she could indeed act in a similar way. It was logical, and she was a logical and confident person.

By the end of the first week, all the senshi were sparring in slow motion and fast forward. Another week, and Kaname was showing off some skills she'd been learning consciously while the senshi were training: namely, using their afterimages as decoys. It required a lot of speed, but once the belief hurdle had been left behind, all involved in the training realised that in this world, speed was a concept they themselves set.

The third week, they practised hitting and dodging. The fourth, advanced techniques were taught.

All knew that once outside the system, they would lose these newfound abilities, but for the moment, while they were in this digital world, they would be able to make use of everything their imaginations could create.

And all the while, the constructs in the Zone were built, eldritch fingers rising up from the ground into the sky. From time to time, energy would crackle between the towers, before bursting into the air. Spring storms released these electrical charges in huge bolts of lightning that would rain down into the conducting lightning rods on top of the buildings in the city, or harmlessly into mountainsides and hills surrounding the CBD, although Kaname, in her more Ranma-like moments, would stare with a troubled gaze into the strike zones as if expecting some huge monster to emerge.

Perhaps she was right, Usagi reflected at one point. Perhaps they were getting too complacent. Monsters could be anywhere in this system. She remembered the construction fields, and shivered, even though she was protected from the storm outside by the warm environment of the small grocery store where she was shopping for the dorm. Somewhere up the street, Makoto was umming and ahhing over meat prices, and had gvien Usagi the task of picking up packet meals, spices and rice.

She considered her dilemma while trying to decide between two seemingly identical brands of ramen, and found her mind wandering. Should she expect some kind of counterattack? Kaname didn't think so, or so Usagi assumed, because the girl was growing silent again, untrusting, withdrawing from anything but training. Hotaru was reacting badly. For all she acted cold and aloof from the whole matter, she was still in reality very young and easily hurt. More easily hurt than others, since she hadn't trusted people for a long time while she had been possessed by a demon in order to save her life. She had trusted Ranma, and now Ranma had said something that made her hurt...

Usagi had warned him. Had warned him and the others. Something had told her he would be a bad thing for the senshi, and while some things had worked out, and while he had managed to make Hotaru (and perversely Mitsuki) happy, he was also master at making both disappointed and depressed. Neither was a state Usagi liked her friends being in. Yet something about Ranma stopped her from villifying him. Was it his cheery persona? His optimism? His refusal to leave things unfinished? His spine? Something about the way he handled his less-than-normal curse, perhaps? Usagi didn't know. She should, though, she fumed to herself.

With a start, she realised there was no sound in the grocery store. Something had happened. She looked around, and there were a variety of GOTT agents closing off either end of the aisle, all identical in appearance although none looked like the Agent Sato who had caused so much trouble for the senshi previously. The closest to her spoke. "It is one of the anomalies."

One behind him continued. "Orders from the Head Office have changed. This one is to be erased." As one, the dozen or so agents standing around Usagi took on attack postures, before running towards her as one.

It was automatic. Later, she couldn't explain how she had reacted so fast, felt no doubt, no confusion. She had just dropped the ramen packets from her hands, and launched at the agents like a demon possessed. Drawing energy from the ambient temperature in the store had frosted the windows over instantly, and likewise froze any liquids on the agent's exposed body parts - eyeballs, for example - yet that hadn't slowed them at all. Usagi had no time to transform, just let slip with a punch that sent one agent through a dozen aisles, smashing through the shelves, another flew away with a kick that smashed him into the freezer unit at the end of the aisle, also knocking down half a dozen agents. More crowded in, and her fists and feet blurred with activity, her mind bright with confidence and burning with righteousness and supported by hope. An agent got a punch in, and she flipped backwards, quickly controlling her flight by grabbing onto a support column as she whizzed past, and turned her momentum to good use, swinging around the post and smashing her feet into the two agents running to follow. She lost track of the fight, until Makoto was there beside her, beating back the agents now numbering in the three-dozen.

"Thirty of these guys, just for us?" Makoto smirked.

"Don't get overconfident!" Usagi chidded through gritted teeth. "These are still people! We don't know what shape they'll be in after this is over!"

That quietened Makoto for a few moments, the seconds while they blurred the world around them. The environment seemed to darken, the floor run like a black ocean while the cabling on the ceiling seemed to swim and pour, split into children and great-grandchildren while they writhed into plugs Usagi couldn't understand. No doubt Ami would talk at length of 'quantum bubbling architecture' and 'shoe string economic theorems' and Usagi would be lost, but so long as someone knew what was going on, Usagi would be happy. From Ami's understandings, she would break it down until Luna could understand it, then break it down further so Usagi could. She would go with Ami's recommendations... if indeed the world was changing around them in alien ways, then that might mean Ami was wrong about the timetable.

And then, one last punch, and the agents rolled to their feet, sunglasses broken, suits tattered and rumpled, and almost as one, they tilted their heads, cracked their necks, and then straightened their ties. "Interesting," the first said. "You've been upgraded." Before Usagi could reply, the agents derezzed in a buzz of static, collapsing back into innocent people. They looked around, confused, and then began to drift off, as if deciding in a subconscious communal effort that nothing had happened and they really should be getting back to their daily routine. Usagi shuddered with the normality of it all, and glanced at Makoto.

"I heard the commotion," she offered with a shrug, but somehow Usagi knew that wasn't entirely true. Usagi could feel it, too. Was this what Ranma had talked about? Being able to sense people and their states from afar, without needing to see or hear someone? Just that advanced tickle in the back of her head? The one that said, look out! or, she's in trouble! that Usagi often relied on with her friends taken to an advanced degree. It felt good. It felt incredibly temporary, but boy, did it ever feel good.

"Did you get everything you needed?" Usagi asked. Makoto pointed at bags left haphazardly near the entrance to the small store, but Usagi was already looking.

"I think we'd best get home," Makoto murmured, as she brushed past Usagi, heading for the bags. Usagi agreed.

Once they had returned to the dorm, they found the others practising. As usual, Kaname had them fighting in sped-up mode, but Usagi and Makoto could see them move. Each individual punch and kick and magical ability. The senshi were finding new methods of combining their powers and strengths daily in this world now; from nowhere, Hotaru produced her Silence Glaive, spun it around, then began to drop it.

Kaname's hand grabbed it as if from nowhere. No, not Kaname's, Hotaru realised. Ranma's. "It's not time to drop the Glaive," he said, momentarily before something in him wavered, and Kaname was back again. She looked surprised, but her hand held steady on the weapon. "Like he said," she offered, before letting go, and turning from Hotaru.

Mitsuki's eyes followed Kaname as she made her way through the training group, toucing hands and arms here, shifting legs there, until she was happy with the fighting styles being used. Then, once close to the dorm, she ducked inside. With barely a thought, Mitsuki called back into training she'd long-since forgotten, and tracked her progress through the dorm buildings by her ki output. In the system, it was muted, far more than MItsuki remembered. But perhaps it wasn't the system so much as Mitsuki had forgotten her training. Once, she had been good, as good as Ranma had been as a child. Once, she could have gone on as he had, become a fearsome force, yet she had already woken as a senshi, when her mother died, and she no longer saw the need to practise her arts. Once she ascertained where Kaname was going, she left the others to their sparring, and headed inside herself unnoticed.

She found Kaname in the hot springs - the men's, of course - and peeled off her training gi in the change room, wrapping a towel around herself and heading out into the springs area. Kaname didn't notice her, lying under the water as she did often these days, but she felt the ripples as Mitsuki slid into the water with her. Kaname sat up, blinking warm water out of her eyes.

"It's all right, you know," Mitsuki said, opening the conversation.

"What is?"

"Dying," Mitsuki replied, shrugging.

"... why would I be thinking of dying?" Kaname asked, eventually.

"Because that's what you're waiting for," Mitsuki said. "I can see it in your eyes. I've overheard conversations with Usagi. I see... how you act with Hotaru. I mean, she nice, but she's wanting you to die as well."

"WHAT?"

"Oh, not like that. She wants her Ranma back. You're nice, but you're a pale imitation of the real thing."

"... pale imitation?"

"You're the primary personality here, and Ranma's the secondary, but who's dominant? Really? Which of you lives and loves and hopes and dreams and acts, and which of you waits for its time in the sun, carefully allotted to it through no lottery it subscribed to?"

"Ranma's the real me. I'm just his shadow."

"Exactly." Mitsuki leaned forward. "And shadows are extinguished by light. What happens when we turn the lights on in the next few weeks? Do you vanish? Do you sleep? Do you go anywhere when you die?"

"This is cruel, even for you."

Mitsuki shrugged again. "It's something you have to be thinking about," she said, off-handedly. "And it's something you need to prepare for. And it's something that you need to know... you're not alone in. I'm here for you. You know that, right? I'm here if you need someone to talk to. Because, because, some people know what you're going through. Sometimes." She fell silent, contemplative.

"Is there something you want to talk about?" Kaname asked, eventually. Mitsuki shook her head, and stood up.

"No," she admitted. "Nothing. Just... if you need to talk to someone who understands? Come see me. You know where I am." She left the springs enclosure for the change room, wrapping her towel around her again, leaving behind a depressed young woman.

XXXXXX

Now. The time was now, or never. If never, then the Dark Kingdom would never eventuate. If never, then Yoshihiro's existance would be for naught. If never, then billions upon billions of monsters would forever be locked into stasis, sealed behind the barrier erected by Serenity in the outrush of energies from the destruction of the destruction of the Moon Kingdom, lives cut short by an arrogant bitch who thought she could alter the laws of nature without effect.

And yet, Yoshihiro knew pressing the button would commit him to something he had only just found doubt for. This action would doom the world of his host's birth, doom any humans, animals, plants, rocks... everything... mostly, he didn't care. Mostly, he had the memories of a general inside him, a chief of the armies of the Dark Kingdom, a King in his own right, adored by billions in his time, now barely remembered in crude cave scratchings deep below the Earth's surface. And that was the problem. He was aware of the fact he had no other memories, and the reasons why. As a newborn, his first memory had been of his death, and then the waking, his first killings, his first mutation of another, and his first facing against the senshi and their new companion, Ranma Saotome. He knew these were his memories, and yet, they were from someone other than him.

That was what caused him to pause. After this action, after this gambit played out, there was no exploration of what existed within him. There would only be the Kingdom. What kind of king did not give himself completely to his subjects? And that he would, he knew, and his existance, his personal existance, would disappear, forever replaced by the regal trappings of state.

Yet, the engine start-up needed to happen now. Four weeks for the engines to build up enough of a head of steam as it were until they could not just displace itself through spacetime, but break the enforced seal that contained the Dark Kingdom. The cross-dimensional energies would have to build to a screaming tangent to realspace before it could use the energies of the people locked into the system's core.

He knew he would press the button, but he still held back. Something that would change the world, that would change him, was something that should be savoured. And what better way to savour something than to leave it in anticipation?

He turned, with a flourish, to Baku. "And so, it begins," he said.

She didn't respond. Not tied into the system as she was, her attention turned inward to the running of the multitude of redundant computer systems holding the life energies of the people of Tokyo. She couldn't respond. There was no way she could respond. No movement, beyond breathing. No sustainence, other than the feeding tube shoved halfway down her throat. No sanitation, apart from the catheter and colostomy bag. No life, beyond the system.

He waited a minute, hand locked in gesture. Yoshihiro wasn't sure when he became aware of Umiko watching from the shadows of one of the doorways, but once he was aware of her, a quick mental nudge bade her enter. Before she could speak, the phone rang.

Annoyed now at twin interruptions of his moment, he waved at Umiko for her to remain silent, while he picked up the old-styled handset. "Hello?"

"They got away, sir," the agent reported.

"That displeases me," he responded.

"They were too strong. The secondary anomalies are exhibiting trained behaviour similar to the Alpha anomaly."

"That is also displeasing me. You were generated to protect the purity of the system code. It is a mission directive you are failing."

"Yes, sir."

A pause.

"Agent Tomo, give me an update on the progress of construction," Yoshihiro said, finally.

The agent seemed almost to be relieved the question wasn't about the senshi. "Construction is proceeding apace. Intelligence suggests the anomalies do not yet know about the purpose of construction, although they may know they are locked into a computer simulation of Tokyo rather than the real thing. Intelligence believes this erroneous belief is brought about by the fact we have used existing civilian contractors to rebuild the Zone. Construction at ground zero will be complete in twenty-one days."

Three weeks, Yoshihiro reflected silently. Four before he could do anything. But three before the system was correctly aligned. While he thought the senshi could perhaps annoy him further in the system, he didn't think they could actually cause him major troubles and derail his plans. Yes, he had contingencies, but he didn't expect to use them with regards to the senshi.

However, Saotome was another matter. Apparently, his personality had been displaced, and a new personality grown in its place. This personality had the ability to outfight his agents in the system, his defences, the viral defenders, the code generation procedures, and could conceivably tear down the thin walls between Tokyo real and Tokyo make-believe. He rubbed at his chin absently. "Good work, Agent Tomo. Keep in touch." He replaced the handset in the phone's cradle.

Umiko stepped up. "Engineering reports ready, Master."

"Excellent." And still, he hesitated. Some perception of the future, perhaps, or some condescension of the past -?

Umio's hand rubbed maternally between his shoulder blades. "If you are not ready to activate at this time, we could run a test..."

"No," Yoshihiro shook his head. "No, there is to be no test. This will work." Or this will not work, he completed in his mind. He had never been prone to doubts, except where Ranma was involved - and why was that? - and yet, here he was, pausing at his moment of triumph. Once the engines weer activated, the harmonic rumble from them would protect Tokyo from all hostile intent. It would be a force field, although he shuddered to use the human catch-all term. The field was a subtle dimensional barrier field, shifting Tokyo slightly out of phase with the rest of the world. Travellers could come and go safely, vehicles would continue to work coming into or going out of the region defined by the spherical shield, and yet, people or objects hostile to Yoshihiro would be removed from this dimensional location and translated somewhere else.

Where, Yoshihiro didn't care, but he thought the coordinates registered somewhere out in space.

With no more thought, he stabbed his thumb down on the control. The engines rumbled into life, Frankstein's monsters of machinery accumulated from before the initial dimensional rift through the war between the kingdoms through to today waking from their sleep. Without the balance supplied by the crew quarters - among other rooms - that had been removed in the rebuilding of the engines, the power-up caused some minor shaking until they had banged millennia of disuse out of them and cycled into a smooth power curve. Yoshihiro set the primary nav console to increment the amount of energy flowing into the drive system slowly, and stood back, satisfied.

Umiko looked at him expectantly.

"It's time."

She smiled at his words, and left the bridge via slipgate. For Earth, obviously, he reflected. She had her plaything there. He needed to be played with. Yoshihiro had work for him to do, and his dear mother understood the need for it.

XXXXXX

Kenichi swore. He swore he didn't want to do this again. And yet, he was. He knew he was. It was going to happen regardless. Then it was happening.

The monster paused in her rythym, panting, and looked down at him, smoothing back an errant ear with a hand and tucking random strands of hair behind it. "Is everything all right, my sweetmeat?"

He wanted to say no. He wanted to push her off him, withdraw from this battlefield, and retreat to a place she couldn't touch him. But that was impossible for him these days. He knew he could not say no to her. HIs life, his will, was hers. The woman with the bell lied. There were no angels. There were only monsters in the abyss. Her careful eyes searched his face, he could feel them, even if he wasn't looking at her. Then she must have decided it wasn't anything because she began that movement again, but more cautious this time, slower, carefully, as if he had the power to do something to her. Perhaps he did. But he denied the monster within him, and that meant he was powerless.

"Everything's not all right, is it?" she asked after a few more moments, interupting her deep-throated purr but not her motions.

He refused to speak. That, he could manage. More resistance, he couldn't manage. Bound as he was by ties he couldn't fathom, his body, his mind, was hers. She was proving that even now, with that little twist of her hips that brought him to the brink of being able to claim he couldn't continue for the moment, but she knew his control; indeed, she was affecting it. Normally, being taken against his will such as this would cause him to remain flaccid unless the stimulation was too great and his subconscious desires fought against his conscious mind's disgust. Yet, here, his subconscious withdrew in horror in tandem with his consciousness, and this seemed somehow even worse.

He felt he could have accepted it if she had been human, if a part of him had wanted this. And while she once may have been human, Kenichi knew she wasn't now. This was only parody of love or lust, not the actual thing. This wasn't even about power; this was about gratification and misplacement. He'd seen how she looked at her boss when he wasn't looking. He knew those secret desires that lay coiled behind her eyes. He had experienced them from time to time himself, when looking after people who he protected for a long time, at all hours of the day. People who had to be helped everywhere, people who had no idea of the realities of the world. He had come to be close to them. He had, in some cases, fell hard for them. And although only in a very small group of cases had his thoughts included anything sexual, that yearning to be with someone strongly could translate, if it wasn't a possible union, into messy unions elsewhere. He knew what she was feeling, or a human analogue of the feeling, but that did not make this right.

"That's all right, though," she continued, eyes growing vacant as her face slackened. "It will... be all right... soon." A few more gasps, some vigourous workings of her hips against his, and she dropped down to him, wrapping her arms around Kenichi's body, shuddering almost as if cold. Kenichi thought perhaps she was.

"What do you mean?"

"It's almost time for the endgame," came the small voice. "Reconstruction of reality. The unsealing of paradise."

"At the cost of everything else," Kenichi muttered sullenly.

Umiko drew herself up. "I don't follow."

"You were once human," Kenichi appealed from his prone position. "You must still have feelings and urges for people. Look what you did to me, and I still have them. Not everything is dark and negative with you people; not everything needs to be fought for and won, not everything needs to be destroyed to replace new things with old."

Umiko looked almost sad. "You understand nothing. You understand not why I do what I do. I love my Master. I love my people. I love -"

"That's not love," Kenichi returned savagely. "That's an abomination. You're talking about murder, genocide, as if the human race was nothing but cockro-" His voice off suddenly as he found himself hauled up into the air, above the bed. Umiko's eyes burned with hatred, controlling the threads of dark matter that ran through his body. His throat was being closed, he realised dimly as he struggled for breath, and somewhere else in his head, he realised that was what he wanted. Release. He didn't want to do what they had planned for him and couldn't end it all himself, so having someone else end it for him, that was his only chance.

A moment before his triumph, he felt the air around him cool, the tendrils within him slack and release, and he dropped onto the bed's surface. Umiko sat beside him, dejected. "You never accepted the gift we gave you."

"It isn't a gift."

"It is if you think about it the right way. Freedom, freedom to do what you want, power, the power to make your life your own..."

"And a lack of morals and honour. Power corrupts all. I've seen it, in my position, before. A lot."

"You never felt for a man with a vision?"

"Once, I did," Kenichi replied. "But his vision was rotten under the surface. Shining towers for Tokyo turned into slimy grasping fingers trying to hold on to power in the city."

Umiko sighed. "That sounds great."

"He was rotten to the core. No personal integrity, but he hid it well. He donated to charities, he spent time with orphans, he did all the right things, and I fell for them. I should have known better."

"Don't you want to get back at people like that? Make them pay for abusing their privledge?"

Kenichi shook his ehad. "No. Not at all. What you don't understand is that you don't win by lowering yourself to their level. You win by forcing them to rise to yours."

"Not everything can be done happily."

"No, no it can't. But neither can peace be won by a gun or a soldier. That breeds resentment."

"How do you explain your job, then?"

"It's something that I'm good at. Giving my life for another. It's not a trick I can do more than once, usually, so my job might make the one I eventually save for real think about their life, think about what they're doing."

"Most people in power never do. They think your life is theirs to use and abuse, to keep them in their ivory tower."

"You're trying to have me think what you're doing is a good idea. That by supporting you, somehow my life will have meaning. That I'll be justified by their extinction. But I'm human, too."

"No, you're not," Umiko interjected with a smile.

"No," Kenichi said, touching a hand to his heart. And then he knew. Knew what the woman with the bell meant. He'd forgotten his heart. He'd once believed in the power of goodness. That was why he was willing to sacrifice himself. Why he was willing to deprive his ex-wife of a good former husband and his children a good father. He had believed that even evil would do the work of good, even if by accident, simply because good was too overpoweringly strong to resist it. Angels were everywhere. And right then, he realised he himself had been one, and he was determined to regain that feeling within himself. "Unlike you, I'll always be human. Because that's what I choose. That's how I choose to live."

"You don't have a choice," Umiko warned, and he felt invisible strings inside him pull his head, shake it in a negative gesture.

He heard the words, "No, I don't," spill from his lips, and he knows he hasn't spoken them. He feels the smile, natural in appearances, rise to his face as she grabs him and holds him down again, and he knows in his heart that he has a chance.

Because the angels tell him that.

XXXXXX

Agent Tomo looked over the reports on Sato's desk. He had found his location outside of the system had some bonuses, such as being able to slip into system time to do paperwork or to consider fresh plans. In the last week, since the Master had contacted him, the senshi had repelled every attack his agents had launched against them, and he was unsure of how to proceed. Construction in the Zone had almost been halted at one point, and had only been guaranteed safety (that time) when the Saotome construct had halted, looked at the construction site with all her attention focussed on it while managing a complex fight against thirteen agents, and had then somehow manoeuvred the senshi into moving away from the site.

Tomo did not find that thought attractive in the least. The thought that Saotome might have plans running contrary to the Master was a scary concept, and that Saotome might have plumbed the depths of the Master's plans was scarier, although Tomo didn't actually feel fear.

He reached for another report, talking about the imaginary power levels displayed by the senshi. If that power could be harnessed in the system, the Master's plans could be realised without needing a reciprocal locational beacon in the real world.

A knock at the door startled him, and Tomo looked up, before realising no one else could find this address. Slowly, he stood, slipping his automatic pistol from its holster, and then he stepped to the wooden door, before quietly turning the handle and sliding the door open. Agent Sato stood there, looking none the worse for wear after having his code terminated with a broken logic pipe, an eyebrow raised behind his dark sunglasses. "The vultures move... quickly this time of year," he said, before driving his fist into Tomo's midriff.

The agent staggered back, but Sato didn't remove his hand, and Tomo felt something warm. Normally, he'd have registered it as blood, even if he were incapable of being harmed, as appearances were everything, but this felt... different. His viral defences leapt into action, tracking down various sections of random code flinging themselves at his defences. And yet, Sato smirked. The viral defences didn't fail, they just... didn't react to the code segments once they came in contact. Something was wrong. Tomo staggered to the desk, tried to grab the phone and contact the Master, but his hands wouldn't respond. He looked at them, held them up, and with horror realised they weren't his hands. They had Sato's lines. Shock hit him then, and he looked at his hands, rolling them over and over, and then he admired them some more before turning back to Sato in the doorway. "Contact... has been made," the second Agent Sato said. The first nodded with a small smirk still remaining on his lips, before he turned and left.

XXXXXX

Kaname didn't feel right. Although she could feel her attachments to Ranma more clearly than she could ever before, something else seemed wrong. He was brooding, mulling over something in the way he typically did, it taking all his attention while he stared moodily off into the distance (or at Hotaru) and making ill-thought comments. But that wasn't what was wrong, either. Kaname felt something else. Something all-pervading. She knew something was brewing.

Ranma had stayed her hand nearly a week earlier, when GOTT agents had ambushed the senshi and her at the edge of the Zone. She had wanted to lead the others into the construction pits and destroy everything, but he had grabbed her shoulder, held her, told her no. That was for another time, another place, another reason.

His sense had seemed dark when she'd been stopped. That was his dark persona, she knew. The general side of him that had its own agenda, she was sure. Regardless of what she told Hotaru, if she had to choose between both philosophies, she would choose to side with the construction of Crystal Tokyo rather than the destruction of the Earth. She suspected Ranma was pondering other options, but what, she couldn't say.

Yet, the feeling wasn't that, either. And she knew something was up when Ranma became more alert in her head, behind her eyes. He was urging her to do something. Something important. Something like stepping into the shadow of a doorway.

For five minutes, she didn't know why he'd suggested that, but she didn't dare move. She became a statue, and stretched out with her senses. Nothing there. And then, there was someone. A woman, in the street, dragging a foot that was dressed in a smart black shoe. The blackness ran up her body, turning stockings into trousers, a skirt and blouse into a shirt and suit jacket, long black hair into a short neatly-clipped hairstyle. Breasts flattened and hips grew narrow. The gender on the face changed, from slim and pointed into wider, thicker, superior. Once the transformation was complete, Kaname watched the agent reach into a breast pocket and pull out a pair of sunglasses, which he then slipped on before leaving the street.

Kaname blinked. That was Agent Sato, the system defender who had terrorised her when she'd first become aware of the links between her current self and the previous personality in her head. She waited until he had passed her by, was well out of the street, before she tried to move again. And once more found that Ranma would not let her.

Again, Sato passed her position, not looking around. She couldn't feel him at all by sensing his ki, though, which was new. She'd always been able to detect agents before that way, even if too late, because their power levels were just too high to hide, but this was different. As if he wasn't there, and this was a hallucination. And then he passed by again, and again, and she realised he had to be running around the block at high speeds.

Until the woman's transformation clicked. It wasn't the one Sato she was observing. What had happened to her had happened to a lot of people. An army of Satos marched to a location Kaname couldn't fathom. In the crowd were people who were still changing, mutating, becoming, and Kaname realised the direction the Satos were heading in: the Ai Sou.

The dorm.

There was no way she could move without being set upon by a hundred agents, and while she was confident of fighting agents, these agents felt different. There was something about them - perhaps Ranma could fight them and be assured of victory, but Kaname felt there was something she was missing.

"Ranma..." she whispered as quiet as she dared. "Ranma, it's got to be your turn now." She felt him stretch within her, testing the limits of his boundries, and then with a scream, a shout of rage and strength, she drew all the local energy into herself. Past senshi, past general, into something stronger. Kaname's copper hair became jet black, ki blasted from her body in powerful waves that even the Satos couldn't miss. With a dismissive glance, she called up a slipgate a quarter-second before the dogpile of agents reached her.

Ranma's mocking smirk remained in the air for a moment longer, infuriating Sato, but that too was gone.

XXXXXX

The dorm was under attack when Ranma arrived fifty metres up. Somewhere, they had made the transition between selves, but Kaname was now the passive observer. It didn't matter to Ranma; right now, he had bigger problems - namely the thousand or so Agent Satos laying siege to the main building.

The senshi, in transformed forms, fighting at blindingly super-fast speeds, were holding on, but just barely. The front door was under assault, and only Sailor Moon and Mercury held it. A quick sense of the area told Ranma Mars and Venus were holding the hot springs, Jupiter the side entrance, which left Saturn and Nemesis the roof. Strong as she was, Sailor Moon was falling back, covering an injured Mercury. A glance showed Mercury had been injured, an arm broken, and she favoured it while her enhanced physiology rapidly knitted the bone and skin back together. Until such time as that happened, Mercury was a lead weight to Sailor Moon, who had to defend not just the door and herself, but also a friend. Ranma thought she could handle that responsibility, as Sailor Moon often displayed mostly untapped strengths from the bottomlessness of her heart; but no, he decided, this wasn't not yet the time for her to shoulder such a move. Her time was coming, but this wasn't that time.

He dropped to the ground, at the back of the crowd of Satos there on the lip of the stairs heading down the hill. One turned, and raised an eyebrow.

"Mr Saotome... back again, I see."

Ranma flicked his hair out of his eyes. "It's time someone stopped you for good. Here. Now."

"It's not... quite that simple, Mr Saotome," said another Sato as he also turned. "Contact has... been made."

"You're a monster. No worse than Yoshihiro or his people."

"That's... an incorrect assumption," said a third. "We're much more... than he could ever be."

"You're nothing but something in a computer."

"Ah, but then... so are you." The Sato who spoke was behind Ranma, had snuck up the stairs behind him while the others had his attention. He punched Ranma in the back, but Ranma's power had made him near-invulnerable to standard physical attacks. Ranma absorbed the blow, and something else, he realised.

The agent's hand was sinking into him, through what he now realised was nothing more than illusion for his core ego and personality. And as the hand penetrated, something began happening. He realised this was what had happened to the other people to make these Satos, he realised this was what he had seen happen to the woman in the street a few moments before, and as he looked down, he saw his visual appearance changing. Finally, he looked up.

"Contact has been... made," stated the new Sato, simply.

XXXXXX

Sailor Moon felt her blood run cold at the statement. She heard it clearly, because the Satos were being very quiet in their assault. She'd heard the conversation, heard Ranma's statements, while she'd fended off blows and defended Mercury from attack. The other senshi had only been able to kick and made the occasional punch or block since her arm was broken, and the two had found themselves the victims of a renewed assault. Ranma's appearance had cheered Sailor Moon, but she hadn't known why he had paused, why he had talked to the Satos. Now, it was too late. They would have access to Ranma's strength, his skill, and Sailor Moon realised, like Tuxedo Kamen before him, she wouldn't kill him if he turned to the other side. She couldn't. She wouldn't. The future wouldn't come if they gave up on everyone. Their future needed them to be compassionate, to be confident, to be truthful, to be just, and killing Ranma wouldn't be any of that, no matter how evil.

Well, maybe if he was really evil... but that was neither here nor there. The Sato's paused, and for a moment, Sailor Moon hadn't realised they had stopped fighting. She stopped too, as they drew back, parting like the Red Sea. And there was -

Sato.

The one that had been Ranma. "Sailor Moon... Usagi..." he began, as he walked towards her, a confident cocky swagger to his stride. "You don't know... how much trouble you've caused... me." Beside Sailor Moon, Mercury tested her arm. It would be enough for now, she decided, and stepped between Sato and Sailor Moon.

"You won't touch her!" she blurted, and Sato grinned.

"Little girl... what can you possibly do to me?"

But Mercury's visor was down, the powerful Mercurian computer using the system's network protocols previously hacked out of the two Cybrids, Eclair and Lumiere, as well as the GOTT main office to reach between the two and find some kind of chink in his armour. Sato laughed at the attempt, and a moment later, Mercury saw why. Stunned at the sheer magnitude of what she had tried, Sato simply reached out with a hand, and moved her aside as insensible as a zombie. Sailor Moon's dread grew, battling the hope in her heart.

Yet the position she found herself in now was no different to fighting Pharoah 90, or Beryl, or Galaxia. Hopelessly outnumbered, her friends falling to superior forces, herself becoming the last hope for the survival of the Moon Kingdom, Earth, and the future, and with this in mind, the battle against her nerves was won. The tide turned, she reached up, deliberately looking Sato in his arrogant eyes as he took his sunglasses off. Her hands found themselves either side of her collar-mounted brooch. With a stretch, she accessed higher powers, and felt wisdom and skill of ages sweep through her, strengthening her limbs, changing her outfit. Before she could do anything, before even she could finish her transformation, Sato winked.

A scant moment later, a hand snatched out and snapped down on the crystal in the brooch, and Sailor Moon felt her transformation leech away again as power was siphoned off into the agent's fingers. Yet, something was different. This wasn't like the first time her brooch had been broken; no, this was like... borrowing. She felt disturbed that she was being used apparently as a library, but on the other hand, Sato was taking great pains not to hurt her, although she guessed, if she was right, that some resistance was needed.

"Let go!" she shouted, and pummelled his hand with her fists. No result. A boot to his crotch gave him a surprised look, though, and he did indeed stagger back, letting go of her as he fell back into the crowd. A dozen Satos collapsed under the sudden injection of weight into their midst, and then she didn't know which was which as sunglasses flew everywhere.

But a few seconds later, as the other Satos approached again, and Sailor Moon and Mercury stood back to back, waiting for the attack, a Sato learned how to fly. Then another, then a few more. Ranma was up and swinging, shaking off the last vestiges of his temporarily-altered form. "Whoever would fall for that bit of trickery with his kind of power has to be stupid," Mercury murmured softly behind Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon agreed with a nod, but privately felt worried. There was something about Ranma recently, some darkness that still worried her. For all that the seed laid within him didn't overtly or even subconsciously appear to be affecting him, Ranma's attitudes... well-reasoned, maybe, based on more complete information than the senshi had, certainly... seemed to be darkening. His sense of humour, observed here, was slightly disturbing. She reminded herself she would need to 'cure' Ranma of this seed before too long; hopefully, he could handle it until such time as the city had been saved and they were all back in the real world.

"Hmmm... upgrades," murmured one Sato before being smashed backwards off the hilltop.

"A nice effort... Mr Saotome... but ultimately -" one Sato managed before Ranma piledrove him under the ground.

"Useless," another Sato completed, as Ranma snapkicked him in the face, breaking his sunglasses and thrusting him backwards into the distance. A myriad of Satos dogpiled Ranma, burying his slight form under two dozen people, quickly joined by another two dozen. They writhed and grinned savagely, enjoying the superiority over their foe. Sailor Moon took a step towards the pile, to try to help, but there was an explosion of simulated human flesh, and Satos were thrown away. Some impacted into the walls of the dorm, several disappeared over the lip of the hill, and both senshi found themselves having to deflect flying agents for the few seconds until Ranma was back on his feet. One by one, the other senshi appeared from their positions as Satos sprinted for the melee. Ranma appeared to be enjoying himself in a way Sailor Moon hadn't seen in a long time, lost himself in the flurry of kicks and punches and ducks and weaves that led the assault on the various versions of the singular enemy, as if life was once more uncomplicated.

To a degree, she guess from his point of view, it was. Ranma had proven he could handle the complicated dance he now wove across the front lawn, and even if he couldn't, he would just go away until such time as he could handle it. They'd seen that in him again and again. And he wasn't stupid. Well, not that it was stupidity that Sailor Moon was thinking about, but he ran if outmatched. He accepted there was no way he could win a fight if he himself was killed or injured beyond even his superhuman regenerative abilities, and would simply run away. Not that she'd seen it, not since they'd met, no. She had seen him back down, though, and push himself harder, stronger, or rely on the others' strengths to make up for his weaknesses. She felt in him some kind of leadership potential, embryonic; growing fast, though. He had a way with words, a way with people, that he grasped instinctively as he'd matured among them, once away from his problems in Nerima. Sailor Moon also had to admit, she hadn't found the Nerima people to be anywhere near as bad as Ranma had initially made them out to be - but he'd often said he was better away from it all where he wouldn't get sucked into their madness, and she agreed. It had only been recently - prior to coming into the system - that he had been able to go back there among them all without recriminating words and without joining in the blame games that ran around them in the short time they were there. It must have been difficult to be the focal point, but Sailor Moon suspected, from the things that Hotaru had told her from time to time, that with Ranma gone from there, and this new disaster, that the others from Nerima were finding some kind of balance themselves. Without Ranma there to be the central lynchpin of their insanity and jealousies, they were finding themselves without reason to continue to feud.

"He's taking his time," Venus remarked idly.

"I think he's letting off steam," Saturn replied, her Silence Glaive held casually in her hands.

Nemesis said nothing, but Sailor Moon noticed a touch of attraction in the depths of her ice-cold eyes. She shivered; somehow, she knew there were problems to come.

Mercury, from beside Sailor Moon, gave a quiet expletive, almost under her breath.

"What is it?"

"I think I know why Ranma might be one of the Generals," Mercury replied. Her visor was still down, and Sailor Moon could see coloured icons flicker across her friend's face. She drew out the expectation almost unconsciously, seemingly unaware of everyone's gaze centred on her. Eventually, she continued. "There's a spore infection coating him somehow. Inside and out. I'd suggest he was infected with it over six months ago."

"The incident in Furinken," Saturn breathed. "I knew Nabiki was up to something..."

"But didn't that General do something to him, ages back?"

"Natsumi?" Mercury asked, her eyes flicking to Mars. "Yes. She gave him her power, I suspect, but the spore infection was what allowed it to take hold. It was already manipulating him by then. Rewriting his brain and body into a recepticle for darkness." Ranma smacked an agent with jaw-powdering force, and a Sato bounced off across the plateau.

"Is it too late to be reversed?" Sailor Moon hesitated in asking. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, not just yet, anyway.

Sailor Mercury shrugged. "I won't know until we try. But the fact he doesn't seem to have undergone any lasting evil changes, I should think it'll be easy enough to get rid of. The spore... is very old. The readings its giving me suggest it's been in an active state for some three thousand years, but not attached to anything."

"It's confused," Jupiter said.

"That's correct; I believe having been given a host, the spore isn't sure what to do with him anymore."

"No, I meant the agent," Jupiter corrected. She pointed. "Look."

Almost as one, the Satos were pulling back, straightening jackets, returning sunglasses to their noses, stretching out cricks in their necks and holding various injured body parts. As they pulled back, the senshi could see the people Ranma had hit the agents out of, lying almost motionless on the ground. She stifled a moan as she realised they were still alive, just very, very injured from having hundreds of people trample on them. She gave an almost unconscious glance at Saturn, who was already widening her eyes in surprise and expectation. Sailor Moon herself gestured her crescent wand into existance, waiting, catching her breath before her next job.

"More," said one Sato.

"We need more," said another.

"That is... logical," a third added.

"You're welcome to try," Ranma grinned back, a little savagely. He gestured with his hands, an almost-flowing gesture that ended in a combat-ready pose. "Bring it on." The agents backed off. Then, as one, they turned and ran down the hillside.

For a minute, Ranma stayed in position, then left go of all his transformations, dropping back to Ranma Saotome's body... or rather more currently, Kaname Mizuno's. Kaname walked back across to the senshi, looking back over her shoulder. "Is everyone okay?"

An understatement. But the feeling was genuine. Sailor Moon tried not to get angry at the showboating Ranma had just acted out, realising somewhere that by taunting Sato, he had gained the agents' attention and drawn it away from the senshi. Yet, it had also almost caused them all a lot of grief: playing with the agents in that way had caused Sailor Moon's heart to almost stop in fear when Ranma had been assimilated into the collective. So she said nothing, stepping past Kaname to begin work on healing those lying injured behind. Saturn stepped past as well, looking at her boots as she passed. Mercury continued to stare through her visor at Kaname, who grew uncomfortable with the attention, until Nemesis stepped in, wrapped an arm around Kaname's shoulders, and led her inside.

"So, how did you find out this was going on?"

XXXXXX

The explanation of what had happened took most of the rest of the day. Kaname would finish a statement, and the others would want to know more detail about what was going on. Most had dropped into their original forms, but Mercury was still working inside her visor, frowning, as Kaname continued her story.

"So, you called Ranma, and he came?"

"Yeah. It was... weird. I knew I could. I asked, and he came." Mitsuki leaned forward eagerly to say something, then thought the better of it and leaned back again. Kaname didn't notice. "But he came, and then we teleported to above the dorm. And the rest, you saw."

"Teleported? Like monsters?"

"Yeah," Kaname said, slowly, thinking about it. "Kinda like them, yeah. Slipgating, the girl in between says."

"And this girl in between. She's, she's who Ranma spent those months talking to while you were just... well, you?" Hotaru asked quietly.

"That's right," came the reply. "I think she's got a soft spot for Ranma. I think she thinks he can save her life again or something. Baku, the dream monster. She has some serious issues. She's not as evil as she likes to think she is. She just likes hating herself for reasons I don't quite know, and externalises that."

"That sounds like our old friend, Natsumi," Makoto said.

"Ranma's old friend," Hotaru corrected, a frown on her face.

"Jealous?" Minako nudged an elbow in Hotaru's ribs.

"Yes. She's spent more time with him these last six months than I have," she replied, but the look on her face suggested more was up. She looked away from the others, deep in her own thoughts. Minako's eyes turned curious and concerned.

"Ranma can come and go now if you ask him?" Usgai asked again.

Kaname shook her head. "I don't know if he can or not. I didn't think he'd go away again so soon, but he did. I certainly didn't try to come back to control, and I don't think he gave it up. I don't know what happened."

Mercury nodded, still silent. Kaname eyed her cautiously. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Mercury replied, sliding her visor up. "Merely running through variables regarding the propogation of Satos and formulating strategies for defending against this new tactic."

Kaname nodded, twisting her mouth into a parody of a smile. "Let me guess: for numbers like that, we need him." She didn't say who, but the others knew. Mercury refused to confirm or deny, continuing to look Kaname in the eyes. Usagi felt uncomfortable, and the others shifted uneasily also.

But then Mercury shook her head. "Not exactly. But I think some time ago, Ranma was infected with a spore organism. I've been comparing scans of you from when we... first met, from when we first met Ranma, and now, after you've been able to change into... a senshi and a Dark Kingdom general, and at the same time... that may not have any effect in a world we perceive as mostly imaginary, but I am concerned in the real world, there may be an effect none of us, yourself and Ranma included, may like."

Kaname was silent for a while. "Is there any way we can remove it?" she asked, finally, sitting up straighter.

Mercury paused before nodding, a slight hesitation that only Usagi noticed. She frowned, curious. But Mercury was already pulling her visor down again and beginning the operation. The other senshi pulled back, although Mitsuki didn't step quite as far back, and Hotaru moved slightly further away, still distant. Minako's arm found its way around her shoulders as Mercury began a complicated procedure on a keyboard projected on the inside of her visor, fingers tapping apparently at nothing. Flickers of aqua-colouring energy lit the lounge like the light cast from an arc welder, dancing quickly along Mercury's arms and across to Kaname. Her fingers sped up, the energy probing through Kaname's clothing, her mouth, nose and eyes. Parts of her skeleton became visible with the bursts of light, and yet the senshi weren't blinded by it. Kaname's eyes narrowed and she fidgeted where she sat, uncomfortable with the appearance of the procedings, possibly worried about the performance on display, but Usagi couldn't really say. There was no fear, no anger, no resistance.

For some reason, that worried her.

But really, she showed no signs of the darkness that was evident in Yoshihiro's forces. No selfishness beyond Ranma's usual arrogance and thoughtlessness - when he was around - and Kaname hadn't yet started killing people for fun or draining them of their energy - besides her power-up ability. So why was Usagi thinking something should be happening, something was going wrong? Why did Usagi have the nagging feeling this was not stopping the problem?

She didn't know. Even as she thought those words, Mercury's light show dimmed, and eventually faded as she dropped her fingers from the non-existant keyboard, and let her transformation fade. "There's no sign now of infestation," Ami said, dropping into a chair. She looked exhausted. Usagi didn't blame her; without rest from the fight, she had saved someone's life by throwing herself whole-heartedly into yet another fight. The others all looked tired, and Kaname - who didn't look tired at all, dammit - gently sent them off to their rooms to sleep with the promise she'd stand watch.

Usagi was too drained to complain as Kaname led her towards her bedroom. Once she was stretched out on the bed, and Kaname was pulling the blankets up, Usagi thought to ask, "Are you sure you're okay?"

Kaname's twinkle disappeared from her eyes, and Usagi knew the impish grin was Ranma's. "We're both okay. The time is coming, but the point of no return has already passed by. I can't be here forever, not like this. it's my time."

"Are you okay with that?"

"I... think so," Ranma said, sinking to a crouch and rolling back slightly on his ankles. He looked thoughtful. "It's going ta be exciting, I think. Or else it wouldn't appeal."

"Appeal?"

Ranma's eyes locked on to Usagi in the here and now, and his expression closed like a door. Kaname was back. "I don't know. He's not telling me anything. Just that I think it's going to be final." Kaname stood, and left the room. Before she shut the door, she paused and added, "Whatever happens, don't blame us. Or Hotaru or Mitsuki. It's our dance." The door slid shut.

XXXXXX

Each day, the senshi fought Sato. Hundreds, then thousands, then more. But the senshi were as strong as they wanted to be while in the system, and they wanted to be invincible. With Kaname and Ranma to organise them, they stood more of a chance, in a tighter group, fighting away from their home territory in places more defensible. And yet, for some reason, instead of pressing the attack, Sato would begin to flag, then retreat. No one could work out why, although Ami hypothesised that Sato was only able to possess so many people for a short time, and that his energy would wan the longer he continued the fights. Mitsuki put forward the theory that Sato was trying to keep them tired and unable to act against Yoshihiro's plan in the only way he could. Usagi and Kaname had conferred at one point, and believed both ideas had merit, but neither told the others.

And so they fought. Day in, day out. The fights would start, Ranma would direct, they would win, they would go home to sleep. No major victories were won, but then, no major losses were recorded either. Usagi considered that a bonus.

On the sixth night, Kaname woke the others before dawn, and in the chill morning of early spring, the senshi headed towards Tokyo in the darkness.

XXXXXX

Yoshihiro awoke.

Unlike most people, there was no inbetween with him. He woke, like switching on a light. He was sleeping, then he was conscious and fully functional. Umiko stood before him this morning, as she did every morning. He smelled food beyond her from his dining room, and without effort he stood gracefully and proceeded to eat the meal she had prepared. Like a mother sending her son to a job interview, she brushed at his black suit, preening, grooming. His suit didn't need it, however; she knew that as well as he. But she was proud, and effectively his mother, so he allowed it.

It was her day, too. It was the day for all of them, for all of the Dark Kingdom. He knew the time without needing to look at a watch; like many other sense of his, it was instinctive. It would be Light soon. Time for the unveiling. Time for the unlocking. Soon, very soon, the construction in both worlds would be complete, and Night's Pride could start draining the energy it needed from the people of both cities. With a population of seven million in the system, and easily double that expected to be within close proximity to Tokyo in the real world... it was to be an interesting day.

The breakfast was over too soon for Yoshihiro, he found. Strange; he had begun to enjoy the simple meal that morning rather than it being the standard perfunctory action it usually was. Perhaps that was an omen of things to come, he reflected. Perhaps he was to become someone new today. The saviour of his people. A hero against overwhelming odds. He glanced up at Umiko, already dressed in her business suit, and stood. Ready for a day of work.

"Only an hour more," Umiko said as she offered his briefcase.

"Indeed," Yoshihiro replied, distant. "Have all the modifications been completed? Have the engines -"

"Don't worry," Umiko urged, "it's all been taken care of. I think Ayumu has even painted it."

"Ayumu?"

"Ayumu Kasuga. One of... the lesser monsters. Newly turned just prior to Raijin. She's... different."

"And she has painted Night's Pride."

"Yes."

"What did the ship say?"

Umiko was quiet for a while, cleaning up the table. "I think it's embarrassed."

"Oh." Yoshihiro waited patiently for Umiko to finish, and then when she was beside him, he asked, "Do you feel anything today?"

"I feel lots of things. Anticipation. Pride. Satisfaction. Six months of hard work, brought to an end. The release of our world from the seal placed on it millennia ago. A new beginning. Excitement, I guess," Umiko admitted.

"Hmmm," Yoshihiro murmured to himself. He supposed that was what he was feeling. A new beginning. Anticipation. And yet, they weren't the word he was reaching for. He felt fluttery inside, but he wasn't sure if it was a good or bad sensation. And then he simply dismissed it, called up a slipgate for both of them, and they appeared in an alleyway near the podium there were to make their announcement to the world on.

Behind the walls of the construction site were massive crystal towers. People had seen them for weeks now, and been asking what they were - they didn't look like buildings, and wasn't that what Crystal Tokyo was supposed to be? The announcement had sent waves of surprise and wonderment through the country, and international dignitaries were to be there in the crowd that day. Zero hour was fast approaching. Fifty minutes. Koizuchi already stood on the podium, discussing items quietly with other Tokyo City Planning Committee members. Several bodyguards stood around the platform, eyeing the growing crowd with disinterest. Yoshihiro noticed Kenichi among the bodyguards. For a change, he didn't look worried, or concerned, or scared; he looked thoughtful.

That should have concerned him, he knew, but for the moment, he still had that fluttery feeling. Something was going to happen; something good or bad, he could no longer say. But something would happen. That much was certain; that much was good.

The crowd seemed distant as well. Moving restlessly, like something primal in their brains told them something was happening that was beyond their knowledge. Yoshihiro guessed somewhere in this crowd would be the remaining heroes of the country - those that could get time off school, that was. Something felt strange in the crowd, something muted, but he couldn't pin it down. Instead, he let his gaze sweep over the people, already numbering in their thousands for such an early hour, and found nothing of note. Umiko touched his hand, and they headed up onto the podium.

XXXXXX

In the crowd, Keitaro stood ramrod straight, pretending to be a flower. Narusegawa stood beside him, clutching at his arm, eyes screwed shut. The girls stood clustered around them, mostly watching for anything out of the ordinary. Kaolla Su fiddled with an oversized remote control until she was satisfied it was working fine, while Motoko's stance betrayed no nervousness... beyond her fingers straying around her sword's hilt.

"Shinobu?" Keitaro asked, his eyes also screwed closed.

Shinobu's voice was timid, under stress. "He's not looking now. It's safe."

The wind rushed out of Keitaro as he slumped forward, able to breathe again. Narusegawa similarly collapsed against him, breathing in shallow gasps. "That felt wrong."

"He could sense us, I know he could," Narusegawa replied.

"No," Motoko replied, her voice taut with the tension her body pretended didn't exist. "He is distracted. He thinks this is won. That he is triumphant."

"The others are still alive," Narusegawa said. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. From Keitaro's quick squeeze of her hand, she knew he felt them, too. "They'll be here."

"We get to stop a bad guy! We get to stop a mphhhphhhpht!" Kitsune's hand quickly found its way around Kaolla's mouth to stop her from talking in the crowd. Sarah gave an exaggerated 'shhh!' gesture to Kaolla, who nodded and broke free from Kitsune's grasp, pouted, and then moved back next to Sarah where she pouted some more. "What's the point in beating bad guys if you can't tell people about it?" she grumbled.

"We need to stay quiet for just a little longer, Su, then you can go wild," Keitaro assured the younger girl with a hand on her head.

"Really? All right!" she yelled, jumping around again. Kitsune covered her eyes while Sarah glared Kaolla into submission. "I'll be good."

XXXXXX

Right now. It was all coming to a head right now.

Sailor Moon knew that when she saw Tuxedo Kamen, looking a little the worse for wear, standing outside the Zone with children. She knew they were heroes, just like them, but they hadn't trained like the senshi had, like Ranma had shown them. She knew they wouldn't have been there if it wasn't about to end. Kaname knew something, and that was why she'd roused them so early and brought them here.

She thought.

Kaname didn't seem to be doing a lot of sleeping, but she was no worse the wear for it. Sailor Moon thought she had found that because this was all a computer simulation, perhaps she didn't need to sleep, not if she didn't want to. She didn't know. But she did know that Tuxedo Kamen was looking at her in surprise.

She leapt into his arms, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and not caring. His arms came up hesitantly around her, then enfolded her completely in a tight embrace. "Sailor Moon? I thought you'd be dead!"

"Dead? Me?" she sobbed.

"Everything that's happened... I haven't seen much news," he said, apologetically. He gestured to the children standing beside him, nervous, staring around them in fear and near-panic. "We've been busy."

Sailor Moon stared. She recognised many of these people as those who had fought Raijin with them - many of those who had joined the battle against the raging monster she hadn't recognised or been physically close enough to remember them six months later, but the twin girls she recalled, just as she recalled the girl with the brave face and her adoring raven-haired playmate, and the now-bedraggled teddy bear that hovered protectively nearby. There were just over a dozen of them, all wearing the same exhausted expressions and glancing about in fear. Sailor Moon guessed why. "You've been hiding from GOTT?"

Tuxedo Kamen nodded wearily. "They've hounded us since that monster exploded. We got out of the Zone, only to find government agents... who we THOUGHT were government agents... waiting for us. We only got away by surprise - they weren't expecting us to have any fight in us, and they were right. We ran, hid underground. And since then, we've managed to hide and stay mostly safe. But the last few days, there have been lots of this -"

"Agent Sato," Kaname interrupted. "We're all trapped in a computer simulation of Tokyo, and the world, both worlds, are about to end. We're going to be used as a power source, a battery seven million people strong."

"Seven million people?" Tuxedo Kamen asked, his mind working overtime with the figures. "With that amount of energy -"

"One could destroy a world," Sailor Jupiter completed.

"Or create one," Sailor Moon added quietly. Kaname concurred with a silent nod, all the while looking around.

"Today, it ends. This does, anyway. He's coming. He has to finish us off, so we can't stop this from happening."

"But can we?" asked one of the children.

"Of course we can," Sailor Moon said with a bright and determined smile. "We can do anything. We're the pretty soldiers in sailor suits, and you're all heroes yourselves. If we can't, then who could?" Several of the children smiled, but others looked doubtful. Sailor Moon leaned forward, and spoke slightly quieter, more sincere. "Believe me, we won't stop trying. We'll save Tokyo, the world, and ourselves. I won't let anything happen to any of you." She straightened up, and looked about.

Kaname had brought them to the edge of the Zone, huge walls towering above them. They had been strengthened since Sailor Moon had last been here, when she and her friends had sneaked inside and discovered people being turned into Dark Kingdom monsters for work shifts in the construction of what Ami had realised was a massive transdimensional teleporter. About them so far were no evidence of monsters, nor of the army of Satos following the senshi - in fact, apart from the senshi, Kaname, Tuxedo Kamen, and the children, there was no one about, not even small animals. Beside Sailor Moon, Luna shivered.

In the distance, they heard footsteps. Not hurried, not in unison, but the footsteps of seven million very self-assured people in black suits and dark sunglasses.

Kaname glanced over her shoulder to look, then turned back to the others. "We need to get through this wall. We need to get to the centre of the Zone. And we need to get as many Satos in there as we can."

Sailor Moon pulled herself together, and nodded. "Mmm. Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Nemesis, open us a door." She glanced at Kaname. "A big one."

The senshi complied, and a moment later, the group were pushing through a small debris field of obsidian rock from the wall and heading into a maze of tall matt black barriers. Sailor Moon led the way, walking quickly but carefully. Behind her followed Mercury and Venus, ushering along the front group of children. Tuxedo Kamen brought up the second group, with Jupiter and Mars assisting, while Saturn, Nemesis and Kaname followed behind, the heavy-hitters of the team on guard in case the Satos arrived earlier than expected.

Footsteps above, to the right. A quick ki blast, and a Sato crashed to the ground. Scuttling, to the upper left - then silence. A swing of the Silence Glaive, and something impacted on it, slammed back into the air, and collected several more Satos. The sound of many footsteps, running up the middle - a yell, then a deep rumble as the ground turned to liquid and absorbed an army of Satos.

Then they were free and clear of the maze, in the open, and above them rose a series of crystal towers of eldritch design. They looked blasphemous somehow, the eye trying to resolve it into something it could understand, but failing dismally. "Don't even bother trying!" Kaname shouted as she now took the lead, searching out the centre of the Zone. She knew where it was. She'd been found there, and she knew where it was instinctively. The others followed suit, not needing to ask to find out what she meant by her words - they knew she was referring to the architecture above them.

As the group broke and flowed around towers, they had to dodge tentacles of black that stabbed down into the ground, spreading corruption. Everything hummed with power of a kind that couldn't be seen, only felt in the deepest, darkest pit of one's bones, and Sailor Moon fought the urge to call a halt to the flight, intending to try and bring down some of the towers. But she knew this was needed, somehow this would all work out.

There would be a happy ending.

There had to be.

And then they were in the centre, Kaname holding firm against the waves of Satos that charged, and Sailor Moon lost track of time.

Kaname's fists blurred, and swung, cracked with the sound of sonic booms and created huge wakes in the ocean of agents as she boosted those she touched back with such force, they bowled over the horde behind them. And somewhere in the middle of that, she found peace.

XXXXXX

"Hello, Ranma," Kaname said, simply.

He sat beside her, twirling a flower in his fingers gently. He wasn't looking in her direction, rather he was staring out at the sun rising. The tree behind them felt real, as did the grass under them. The growing warmth of the sun reminded Kaname of days she hadn't seen before, and likely never would again. "Kaname, hey," he replied, eventually.

"You know what this is, don't you?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I know what this is," he said, still not looking around. "It's the World. Collective reality subset underlying the subconscious gestalt mind of the population's super entity."

Kaname thought for a few minutes, then nodded. "Yes, that's it exactly."

"And it's empty now. What does that say to you?"

Kaname thought for some more time. "That there's no one left?"

"That everyone's busy? Or that people can't access this? The groupmind is gone, Kaname. We're on our own here. When this place goes..." Ranma shrugged.

"It's time to go?"

"Yeah." Now he turned, looked at her with the gravest of expressions. "When this place goes, it's time to die. One of us has to. That's when we need to... do it. And only one of us can go back."

"I know." Kaname repeated that in her mind. She knew. Her choice was made. She hadn't had a long life. Ranma had lived nearly nineteen years now. The choice was simple.

Ranma knew, too. He'd lived nineteen years. In some form, he aimed to live longer. Natsumi had taught him things, things he could apply in the real world... things Kaname didn't know, and things there weren't time to teach her. He could survive the split from his body. She couldn't. Wasn't much of a choice, not for a hero, not even for whatever Ranma was these days. Darkness had touched him, just as much as the light, and neither wanted to let the other have pride of place in his psyche. Which suited him fine. He was Ranma, he was himself, he wasn't defined by someone else's narrow definitions of what he should be.

His choice was made. So Kaname could live, he had to die.

XXXXXX

A Sato made a lunge at one of the children, and while she flinched back, grabbing for a card and her wand, her teddy bear protector transformed into a giant lion, breathing huge gouts of magical flame that incinerated a dozen Satos. Moments later, the burnt corpses stood up, brushed soot off their sleeves, and charged back in, but by then the girl had grown to giant-size, and was swatting dozens of Satos at a time with swings of her foot.

The grey and purple android flying above the group fired off blast after blast of energy at the oncoming agents, mostly to no avail, but occasionally, in the headlong rush forward, several of the agents would be discorporated until their code could reintegrate.

The senshi fared much better, with their speed and strength enhancements they could access due to belief, but even so, they were being pushed back. What had started off as a wide perimeter was now shrinking to a circle a bare two dozen metres across at its widest. Kaname, operating on automatic, filled in when a senshi needed to relax for a few seconds, assisted where the children were faltering, would push back the agents on one side until she had left for someplace else, and they pushed back in.

A losing battle, Sailor Moon knew, but it was one they couldn't afford to lose. Whatever strategem Kaname or Ranma had up their sleeves, it had to be now. She could feel...

There! One of the towers let off a flickering surge of darkness, energy licking out and absorbing a battalion of Satos. It was starting now.

XXXXXX

"... with the kind assistance of the Diet, and local planning committees, our fair city has been rebuilt anew - as Crystal Tokyo - by the man standing here with me now, the millionaire Yoshihiro." A smattering of applause came from the audience of thousands, but most people chose instead to cheer vocally. Yoshihiro stood on the podium with Koizuchi, bodyguards flanking either side of them in their dark suits and sunglasses. Koizuchi had the microphone for the moment, ready to hand it over to Yoshihiro, wrapping up his speech. "He's been reclusive until now, the moment Tokyo has most needed a protector, a patron, and he has now designed the city of the future... and is going to reveal it to you all now."

Koizuchi stepped aside from the microphone, and after a moment's hesitation, looking over the crowd, Yoshihiro stepped up. For a few moments, he busied himself raising the microphone to his height, then he let his eyes sweep over everyone again. To an outsider, it looked like he was touched by all the people who had turned out for this occasion, that he was excited about the moment his masterplan was revealed. He actually looked enthused, brimming with enjoyment. Behind him, Umiko smiled. Behind her, Kenichi looked thoughtful.

"Friends." The one word carried with it a touch of emotion most people couldn't place. Those who could realised only that he meant the word genuinely. "You've given this city so much. You've given me so much. The chance to build this vision of your future... it brings tears to my eyes. Honestly, you have no idea, no concept of how touched I am you've all contributed to this moment. This bright, shining, glorious future." Behind him, in the Zone, something started up. An electrical sound, arcs of energy coruscating between emitter points.

XXXXXX

The ground shifted beneath their feet. Ranma and Kaname looked down as one. They could feel it. Their connection with The World was fading as something happened in the system. A shimmering in front of them caught their eyes, and they glanced up to see Natsumi standing before them.

"Parallel subsets failing. System integrity breaching. Dimensional lock is materialising in Tokyo Prime." She paused, looked meaningfully at them both. "It's time." And then to Ranma: "You bastard, you come and save me." She was gone a moment later.

The ground heaved.

XXXXXX

"When I was a child, my - my mother, she said to me, I would create a place for my people that would be looked back on with much joy, much relief, that we had achieved what others have wanted us to fail with. Our home is gone. Our home was destroyed by unthinking monsters, rage people like us cannot fully understand, nor comprehend. But the beast is now gone, dead and discorporated, a thing of history - and history belongs in books, locked away in dark rooms in libraries. To those of us here today, it falls upon us to make a better world for all our people. And so, I have created what lies beyond these walls to be enjoyed by you all."

"Get ready," Keitaro said. "Whatever's coming, it's coming soon." Kaolla Su nodded with a quiet grunt as she twiddled with knobs on an oversized remote control handset. Narusegawa moved closer to Keitaro, her hand quietly closing around his. Behind Yoshihiro, the sounds of industry became louder, more involved. Something seemed to go wrong with the sun a few moments later, the day darkening as if the sky had grown cloudy, but nothing had. Many in the crowd glanced up, but saw no reason the light had dimmed.

XXXXXX

The Satos didn't stop. They continued coming. But they slowed. The Zone around them was picking up in intensity. Licks of energies arcane enough to resist interpretation by Mercury's visor devastated their numbers, but the senshi were growing tired. This had been going on now for a week, and the constant battle was draining. Kaname still moved among them, her moves putting them all to shame. She still looked as fresh as she had months ago when they had first met her. Somehow, that motivated the senshi to continue fighting. The children had grown weary, and were now in the centre of the circle, resting, afraid. Sailor Moon snuck a quick peek at Kaname as she passed by - and realised her hair was fading towards black, then back to red, then back into the dark copper tones associated with Kaname.

XXXXXX

"The entire world will look upon this moment of revelation as a moment that changed the world! In an instant, billions will stop! Tokyo will again be the centre of culture of the world - exporting all we are well-known for to all corners of the globe instantly! A glorious future!"

The whine from the Zone ramped up into a shriek. Now, people started to panic rather than mill aimlessly. Keitaro held the others firm, his eyes never leaving Yoshihiro on the podium. "Su?"

XXXXXX

The ground splintered, shattered, thrust up. Ranma found himself on top, the ground rising high into the air. Kaname dropped, but Ranma reached out and grabbed her in one hand. It was a bad grip, and he found himself thankful Kaname's fingers were wrapped around his, because otherwise he'd have lost her, and that was NOT part of the plan.

But some things go awry.

XXXXXX

Nemesis bumped into Kaname, who stiffened and froze. "Sailor Moon! Kaname's really freaking out over here!"

"Keep the agents off her! We need her!" Sailor Moon shouted back.

XXXXXX

"People of Tokyo -"

A ripple above the streets, and there was something big and green above them... firing into the Zone with a huge energy beam...

"I give you the future!"

XXXXXX

"I've got you!" Ranma yelled against the tornado of sound assaulting them as the ground splintered and fractured even more.

Kaname smiled with relief. "Ranma!" she shouted back. "I'm sorry I won't get a chance to say goodbye to Hotaru or Mitsuki."

She let go.

XXXXXX

Kaname's hair flashed red, and Ranma spun around to Saturn. "End it all now!"

Sailor Moon's eyes widened. "What?"

Saturn didn't wait for an explanation. She spun her Glaive, stabbed it into the ground, and shouted, "DEATH REBORN REVOLUTION!"

XXXXXX

Tokyo paused.

XXXXXX

Dead. They were all dead. Sailor Moon could feel them all, seven million people, her senshi, her lover, the children, Ranma. They were all dead.

Ranma said, "Begin it all again."

So, she did.

XXXXXX

Sound. Furious amounts of sound assaulting their ears. Sailor Moon gagged, and collapsed to her knees. She felt Ranma's hand leave her shoulder, felt him slump for a moment before checking first on Nemesis, then on Saturn, then the others. No more Satos. But it was dark.

XXXXXX

The green spaceship stopped emitting its burst of light, and the sounds ceased. Yoshihiro, arms raised and outstretched, waited, a smile on his face. But what he was expecting didn't happen.

Applause. People were cheering him. A curious reaction to their deaths, he thought stupidly for a moment before realising something had gone wrong. He saw a former subject of his, staring goggle-eyed behind his back, and Yoshihiro turned to see what the adulation was about.

Tokyo.

The walls had fallen, and everyone could see it had returned. Seven million people, lost, aimless, starting to stagger towards the crowds. Buildings, plazas, trees, power cables... the city was back, as if Raijin had never struck at the city six months earlier. Minato had returned. The lock had not been breached. He felt himself stagger, as if struck physically. He dropped his gaze from the buildings to the crowd, and at the front of the crowd...

"You."

Ranma Saotome looked up. "Me." He looked at the cheering throng behind Yoshihiro and shrugged. "You're the hero today. You gave them back the city. They'll love you for it." Strangely, Yoshihiro thought, Ranma didn't sound bitter. Drained, tired, but also... happy. No doubt enjoying being back in the real world. The crowd behind Yoshihiro surged forward past him, embracing those who had returned. Among them were Keitaro, and his charges from the Hinata Sou, their planned attack on the Master forgotten in the rush to see those long-since believed departed.

Annoyed, frustrated, angry, Yoshihiro raised a gloved hand - only to find Umiko's hands wrapping around his, purring in his ear, pulling the arm down, removing him from the area quickly. No one noticed the battlecruiser above them disappear either, for the remainder of the day was celebration.

XXXXXX

Mitsuki lay on her bed, hands clasped across her chest as she considered the last six months. Evil, evil times. She'd said much more than she wanted to, but at least Ranma was back. She felt... safe again. Warm, wanted. She could feel him around her again. Almost feel him in her. He swung, and he swung, but his orbit kept bringing the young man back to her. No. That wasn't right. That was Kari's lust. Had to be. She reached out, took the bottle of pills she kept beside her bed from the low set of drawers there, and popped a couple. She took a sip from the glass of water next to the bottle, and lay back, feeling the extra-strength medication taking effect. But the bottle was nearly empty, she noticed. She'd have to get more. Thankfully, she still had her prescription. That she had checked on as soon as she had arrived back at the dorm. They'd been gone six months, and nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed.

She felt calmer now, not thinking about Ranma so much, and she settled in to sleep.

XXXXXX

Bone-tired, sitting on the roof of the Ai Sou, Hotaru leaned up against Ranma, shivering. He looked up at the sky, curious, almost detached. "It's 1AM, Hotaru. Time you should be in bed."

"I'm enjoying having you back," she said with a tired, but light smile. She snuggled in tighter against his chest - his chest, she'd made sure he had a hot bath before coming upstairs with her. "It's been so long since I've had you this way."

Ranma nodded. "It's been so long... since I felt this was me." His mind drifted to Kaname, that last look of hers. The expression of her death.

"That's to be expected," Hotaru replied. His arm drifted around her shoulders. "Ranma?"

"Yes?"

"Do you... do you love me?" A small voice, in an ancient tone.

"Yes." Distant, from eons away.

"Would you make love to me?" A smaller voice, a nervous young woman.

There was no response for an age. Millennia passed, suns grew old and flared into death, life rose and fell, civilisations were birthed - then developed television and died.

"Ranma?"

"Is that what you want?"

"... yes..."

"Really, Hotaru, is that what you want? If this happens... everything changes. Things won't stay the same."

"Things change, Ranma. I know that." Hotaru found it odd, apparently consoling Ranma, her strong protector.

"I hear a baby crying, Hotaru. I hear him all the time. I want to give him a future. I want to give him love. I want to give him something he never had before." He paused. "Is that wrong? To feel that responsible?"

Hotaru shook her head. "No. It surprises me that it's you talking about this, though. But... we'll use protection. I've still got that condom."

Ranma smiled, still distant.

"You don't sound right."

"Ami cured me this evening," Ranma said, with a bit of a smile playing around his lips. "I'm no longer a Dark General. So she says. I think it was that powder Nabiki used on me. Maybe. I don't know." He shook his head. "I'm a little fuzzy tonight. Mitsuki's... not right. Something's going on there. I've felt it so much recently, and haven't been able to make her right." Hotaru's hand reached up and rested on his where it lay on her shoulder. "I'm missing something. A piece of the jigsaw. I've forgotten something."

Her dying expression.

"Stop talking about my competition," Hotaru tried to joke, feeling like she was speaking through balls of cotton wool. "It's me who's asking you to sleep with her."

"Sleep?" Something of the old Ranma sparked behind his tired eyes. "Who said anything about sleep?" Hotaru giggled. "Go downstairs. I'll be down soon. I'm not feeling right. Something's wrong. I need to clear my head."

Hotaru nodded, pecked him on the cheek, and slipped out of Ranma's embrace. Pausing on the edge of the roof, she gave him a loving look, then headed downstairs.

Time passed. Ranma was barely aware of it. He was missing something. Some part of him. He didn't feel right, he hadn't lied about that. He felt he was less than he had been, like something was left in the system when they broke out. But for the life of him, he couldn't think what.

Her dying expression.

Grief, perhaps? Maybe he was berating himself for not trying harder to save Kaname. But then, she made her choice, as he had made his to save her - it was just that she found hers easier to carry out than he found his. Eventually, he looked into the stars, and made a silent farewell to Kaname before heading downstairs.

He fumbled his way into the room in the dark. Slow, steady breathing issued from the bed, but he knew she wasn't asleep, just resting. "I'm sorry I'm late," he said.

"Shhh, you're here now, that's all that matters," she replied, helping him free his arms from his shirt. His hand scrabbled across her chest like a crab, enough to arouse him while she shifted enough to remove his pants. He kicked himself out of his shoes, and slid under the blankets.

Her body was like fire given form, boiling hot liquid mixed with an almost religious fervour to match. Their lips, then their tongues met, tussled, warred for dominance, while their hands, for so long bound by convention and the restrictions they placed on themsevles, explored each others' body lightly, but leaving nothing untouched. When his hand slipped between her thighs, she groaned with frustration. Her hand wrapped around him, and together they writhed in mutual pleasure.

Once she'd had enough, she pushed at his chest, and he acquiesed, rolling onto his back while she straddled him and pulled him deep within her. The initial motions were clumsy, shaky, but they quickly found a rhythm, a pulse that quickened between them. The fire built, the cauldron boiled, and Ranma rolled her over, driving into her with a few quick motions.

More urgent now. The pressure between them building, and still, silence. Neither of them made a sound. Neither had to. They'd both been ready for this. Her eyes opened in surprise, her neck arched with the sudden arrival of pleasure he'd brought about, and in the same moment, he exploded within her -

Her dying expression, her face bright and happy as she saw something he didn't, something beyond him. He saw it, too. He'd glimpsed it before, in the past, when near death, but now it was clear as day -

Oh.

Oh dear.

He looked down without eyes, and saw Mitsuki screaming, shrieking as she realised what had just happened. He scrambled upright, backpedaled across the room, into the wall as she stared uncomprehendingly at the tableau before him, and then, it clicked. It made sense.

He hadn't felt right all night. He was talking to the right woman. He'd gone to the wrong woman. And now...

"That's right, Ranma," Kaname said from beside him. "You're dead. And dammit, that's one HELL of a mess."

"Kaname?" he asked, bewildered. "But you died -"

"Yes, I did." Kaname gestured at the headless corpse lying on top of Mitsuki, who was still screaming. "And so are you."

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

I said I had this one in progress. It's been a very long time in coming, though. While the two thirds flew from my fingertips in a couple of months, the last third has been murder. About a year ago, we all found out at work we could all lose our jobs. Then we were told that was wrong. Then I got transferred temporarily to our technical division, and then my original department got outsourced to India and my secondment was made permanent. And since then, I've been working hard and getting very little sleep. So writing has escaped my fingers.

I write this at 12:33AM, and I'm kind of glad to have the chapter finished, especially since for the last six months, I've plotted out most of the next chapter and a good chunk of Justice. One more chapter until Love is finished! What's really scary is this and the preceding two chapters come in at novel-length - rest assured, I'm going back to writing shorter chapters, they're much easier to sustain both story-wise and energy-wise. A number of times, I've been stuck on one sentence for weeks, or in one or two cases, months, without any energy to think of a solution.

Not giving an ETA on the next chapter, but believe me when I say it won't be another 16 months (I still find it hard to believe this chapter has been in progress that long). I'm hoping any plot holes that might have eventuated by this side-excursion into the System aren't too gaping. A re-read of chapter 1 shows I've covered most things, even if it might not initially seem that way. Anyway, this isn't going to post itself, so I'd best see to that before I do anything else.

Edit: Sorry guys, has robbed me of asterisks, trying a repost to see if that works...

Next time, Ranma's dead. And the senshi have to deal with it. And then there's his funeral... that's some real fun. But now, he's not really dead kids, just taking a bit of a nap... while he's on a magical mystery tour with a former personality throughout time and space - stay tuned! 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... 


	18. Chapter 18

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.

WARNING: This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, and shameless rip-offs. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned.

LOVE 

By

Raymond Cooper

Chapter 18

Love, Actually

He rolled out of bed, casually and easily. He should have been able to; after all, he'd been doing that very thing for years, ever since he and his wife had bought the double bed from a semi-reputable dealer in the back streets of Yokohama. A disappointed murmured sigh from the other side of the bed caused him to roll his eyes, lie down on the bed again, and roll over to kiss his beloved on the side of her throat. She almost literally purred, contentedly. She refused to open her eyes, although her mouth parted in a slight smile.

"You haven't changed a day since we met," he said, disapprovingly.

"I don't hear you complaining," she replied, one eye cracking open to peer at him in an amused fashion. The voice was light, yet heavy with tone and experience. While he was older than she was, she was so much older than he could ever be, if only by the fact she'd been born before he. 

"You do when I get accused of... of..."

"You can say it," she teased.

"... you know what I mean," he finished lamely. Her hand found its way to his hair and played with it.

"They still call you a pervert because they think I'm in high school," she said, finally. "And _that's_ only a problem because your hormones are hitting you again." She smiled as well, as he kissed the hollow of her throat now.

"It's been 20 years, Hotaru. 20 years since I felt like this," Ranma grumbled as his fingers fumbled with her shirt. "Why don't they make these damned things a bit less fiddly?"

"Again?" Hotaru asked theatrically, an exaggerated sigh following quickly as her slim fingers picked buttons apart on her pyjama shirt, before moving to Ranma's. "20 years of nothing, then all this again. I swear, Ranma," she sighed again, this time deeper, throatier, as Ranma's hands did something interesting, "if you switch off again after another 30, 40 years, I'm going to hit you."

Ranma grinned wickedly before his face disappeared beneath the blankets.

* * *

Ranma's face paled once again. At least, Kaname thought, he'd stopped screaming. She thought this might calm him down. She stood slightly behind him, watching his ears turn red, and yet, despite himself, he could not turn away. He was fascinated by the tableau before him, watching Hotaru, looking perhaps a little older than the Ranma in bed with her had suggested. But on second thought, Ranma had decided this was age in her eyes that he was noticing - she was now a lot older than 16. The Ranma under the blankets moved, and Hotaru moved again.

"What... what am I doin' here?" Ranma asked, finding his voice eventually around the same time Hotaru found hers.

"It's... a place of happiness and joy," Kaname offered, "a little different from where we were before." 

"Where's... where are we?"

"Right now, we're nowhere," the copper-haired woman replied. She sounded a little compassionate, Ranma noted distantly.

"That wasn't a dream, was it?" he said slowly.

Kaname shook her head.

"You died. Earlier today." Ranma sagged suddenly with the admission, as if finally bringing it up had brought him low. Kaname felt it had. She rested a hand on his shoulder, felt him tense under it, but the pity and depression won out and he slumped forward to the ground, on his knees staring at the floor. 

"Ranma... you knew it was coming."

He said nothing, but she could feel the depression deepen within him. She tried another tack, attempting to fix one problem before moving on to the next. "I don't blame you, you know. I... knew what you were going to do. I came to terms with my choice long before you even knew I had one. You were prepared to give your life for mine, when I was nothing but a shadow of you, and when you were needed more. I knew you had a way out... I thought I might have one of my own." 

She shrugged. "And here I am. Now. With you. Watching you and Hotaru... er... do things that... uh... hmm." Ranma turned around around as Kaname's voice trailed off. Her face was growing a bright shade of red but she seemed unable to take her eyes off the spectacle before them. He started to chuckle. "Hey!" she replied indignantly, "I died a virgin! At least one of us is going to be getting something, so if I have to live vicariously through the lives of others, then so be it!" She gave him a light clip around the head, which made Ranma laugh. Through her embarrassment, she smiled. At least he wasn't quite as despondant again, and had perked up a little. He stood up beside her, their eyes meeting.

"I have ta go back, don't I?" he asked. 

"Yes, you do," she replied. "But not right now." She peeked around Ranma's shoulder as Hotaru sighed happily and her Ranma emerged from the blankets again. They kissed, deeply, then Ranma climbed out of bed and disappeared from the bedroom, naked. Kaname's eyes followed him. "Wow. I never got to see that while I had your body. I'm kind of regretting that now." 

"Uh..."

"Oh Ranma, I'm kidding," she giggled, swatting him again. "I wouldn't have looked. That's what I have hands for."

Ranma's face and ears burned brightly.

"Kidding, kidding again." Kaname pouted. "You have no sense of humour."

"I wouldn't," Ranma grumbled, some of his strength of voice returning, "not about that. Not at the moment." He looked at his hands, and waved them experimentally. "I was ready to die for you. I was ready to die. And you - you robbed me of that sacrifice. Not that I'm not grateful or nothin'," he added quickly, "but it was somethin' I was ready for, had prepared for. I'd spent all that time with Natsumi, getting ready for a big push, and... all those plans..."

"I understand," Kaname said, not quite in a placatory manner, but coming close. Compassionate, Ranma decided. "I know a lot more now than I did back then." 

"Back then?" Ranma asked, a little confused. "It was less than twelve hours ago!"

Kaname smiled a private smile. "Twelve hours for you, two hundred years for me." 

"What've you been doing for two hundred years?" 

"What do you think?" Kaname asked quietly. "Learning to become a guardian angel so I could protect you from what obviously comes next."

"Nothin' comes next. I'm dead, remember?" Ranma's voice was a little pointed, and the last words were rasped harshly rather than spoken. Kaname's raised hand forestalled further words, but she guessed he wasn't exactly listening to her right now anyway.

"You and I know this is a temporary matter. Once you have a reason to be alive, you will be." She watched amused as Ranma glanced at the naked Hotaru, now emerging from the bed, before he quickly turned his head back ramrod straight to face Kaname. "You get over that really quickly. You'd be surprised. She's not even all that..."

Ranma noticed Kaname's voice trail off. "She's not even all that what? Hurt I slept with someone else? Sure she is! It's what girls do! I know that."

"True, but there are things you don't know, Ranma. Things working against you here. Things in motion for the longest time." Kaname sighed, dropped her hands back to her thighs with a slap before shrugging and turning them again palm outwards towards Ranma. "And things I can't talk about at the moment. At the right time, though, I'll be able to tell you then." 

"While you think of a good excuse, ya mean?"

"I don't remember you being this antagonistic."

"I don't remember failing to sacrifice myself for my friends, and failing, to watch another friend suicide and failing to save her, to then committing myself to the _wrong woman_ before, either!" Ranma fumed. "This isn't fair! And this... this isn't real," he sulked, not completely to himself. "I'm dead."

"Only _mostly_ dead," Kaname corrected. "I can understand the pain and shock of dying is having some adverse affect on your thinking right now, but you're not really dead. Otherwise..." 

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise you would be someplace else," Kaname finished, with a semi-knowing shrug, continuing to admit, "You'd probably get your wings before I did."

"Wings? You're... you're a..." Ranma was at a loss for words. Kaname reached out and closed his mouth. 

"Wow... that feels... like me." She ran a hand across her own jaw, feeling similarities, but also some differences. She frowned, shook her head, and continued. "Yes. A guardian angel, to be exact. I knew you weren't listening. Given special instructions to save your life and get you back on the right path. You were nearly there in the system. You'd developed a plan, and were committed to seeing it through. You received the gift of prophecy to see you through the... more delicate interpersonal relations you were heading towards, as well as give you some idea of where to go." 

"What?"

"Remember that last time you went all 'oh look at me! I'm a big bad Dark General and a senshi!' at the same time? Prophecy. You saw the future. We saw the future. And I saw... this. So did you. But you saw it from your perspective, I saw it from mine. I knew I'd died before you. That wasn't easy to live with, either, but it was the way things would be, so I had to accept it. I knew my life wasn't forever."

Ranma shook his head to clear it. The talking was helping a lot. He wasn't thinking so much about the bloodied pulp he'd left behind in Mitsuki's room, not as much. And knowing he was dead? Well, for the moment, nothing could help his state of being, but he didn't have to let it interupt his recently-found peace and quiet. "So... you're a guardian angel. Mine?"

Kaname considered. "Among others, yes. The Yggdrasil system oversees all of reality, this and others, so there's a lot of work, and most people only get the one option. You know, to pass on to the great beyond and live in the clouds and all the other volumes of misinformation."

"And the reality is...?" probed Ranma.

With a smug smile, Kaname replied, "I can't tell you that. It's something you have to see for yourself." She hesitated. "_But not yet._ Right now, you seem okay again. If you think you can handle it, I'd like to..." She broke off, looking a touch more serious than before. Ranma nodded grimly.

"You mean, go back to Mitsuki's room." Ranma tried to shrug casually, but found himself afraid somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps not afraid, but apprehensive, he decided. A real man, as he found himself for the first time in six months, would face his fears and his mistakes with a brave face. Or, at least, face them, rather than hide from them for any longer. He nodded as best as he could. "Take me back."

* * *

Inside Mitsuki's room again. Ranma took great care to look everywhere but at his corpse, still lying on top of Mitsuki. She was still screaming, her hands still gripping his shoulders where she'd been squeezing in what Ranma remembered was an extremely pleasureable grasp. Behind him, he could feel Kaname's presence.

He could hear doors opening now, senshi wondering aloud what was going on. Downstairs, Ranma felt Hotaru's fear as she slid his door open, then ran up the stairs to Mitsuki's room. She skidded into the room, the door flung back along its sliding track. Then she halted, backed out, hands clasped across her mouth. "No, no, he'd never -" she said, shaking her head before Usagi's arms wrapped around Hotaru to keep her upright and from bolting.

Ranma noticed she made sure Hotaru was okay before she looked up. Her face grew pale as her eyes flicked around the room, noticing the new decor, but she didn't scream, didn't collapse. For that, Usagi gained new appreciation in Ranma's eyes. "A little late," Kaname prodded from behind. 

Then, just as Ranma opened his mouth to say how impressed he was with Usagi's caring reaction, she turned her head to one side and vomited, moving aside to not block the door. The other senshi, who had been blocking up the hall behind her, suddenly found themselves with a good view of the gore, and began dry retching. Usagi could no longer hold Hotaru, her hands needed to help hold her up as she retched, and Hotaru found herself to the wall and collapsed down to the floor against it, her inarticulate screams fading into a weird hiccupping sound. His heart clutched at that sound... the noise of someone letting go.

With a wave of her transformation wand and a barely audible unlocking phrase, Ami transformed into Sailor Mercury and began a scan of the room while the senshi tried to make sense of what had just happened. Mitsuki continued to scream. "Isn't someone going to help her?" Ranma asked to a crowd that ignored him. "Push me off, cover me with a blanket - just do somethin'!" 

Mercury's gaze trailed across the room, finally landing on Mitsuki's bottle of pills. She frowned, and called up more information, centering her gaze on the small unobtrusive bottle. As Ranma watched, she started, eyes opening wide as she remembered something.

"She's remembering that whole Dark General thing right now," Kaname confided in a whisper. "She's found something in the pill bottle that's making her think maybe you've done something to Mitsuki. No, she's just changed her mind. Maybe something Mitsuki's done has reacted with you badly." She paused for a moment. "I'll let her explain."

Mercury looked around, and saw Usagi on hands and knees before a pool of vomit, Hotaru next to her. Makoto, taking some shuddering deep breaths next to Mercury after a whole lot of her own retching, found herself pulled to one side as Mercury grabbed her, Usagi and Hotaru and took them further down the hall. As Mitsuki's screams were growing into hoarse sobs, and he couldn't do anything for her now, Ranma followed, his curiousity enhanced by Kaname's words.

Mercury told Makoto to help Hotaru, then turned aside and began speaking to Usagi in a low voice. "I scanned Dark Kingdom energy in there, Usagi. That's what killed Ranma. He... had some parasitic spore on him, in the system which I thought I got rid of," she continued, shaking her head, "but I don't think I got rid of it. I sensed it again last night, and cleaned it off him. I think that may have been what was making him a General."

"But... if you cleaned him once and he got it again..." Usagi wondered through gasps and snorts as she tried to clean her nose and throat while still trying to hold her bile down, "maybe it came back again and he went evil and..."

"I don't think so," Mercury said, casting a worried eye back down the hall where Minako and Rei were starting to head slowly into the room to help Mitsuki. "The spore he had shows the same energy signature as one that is showing as residing in Mitsuki's pill bottle. It's nothing strong, though, not as strong as Ranma's was, and his was fairly weak, all things considered."

"Then -"

"The point is, there should be some residual patterning of the signature in Ranma's... in Ramna," Mercury corrected with a glance down at Hotaru, who was nodding silently to a quiet question of Makoto's while she was cleaned up. "And Ranma has no such signature. He has no sign of Dark Kingdom energy or matter on his person, nor in his clothing. I think, this may be some after-effect of Mitsuki's medication. Something that has been placed into them. But I won't know for sure without study of them."

Ranma moved aside as Minako came up behind him, and cleared her throat uncertainly. "Ummm... Usagi... we should probably call someone. An ambulance. The police. Someone."

Kaname touched him lightly on the shoulder. "Come. We've other places to be."

"Why?" Ranma asked. "I've just died. Isn't that it? If I'm going to come back from this, shouldn't I do that now instead of making them hurt?"

Kaname smiled. "You have come so far, and yet you still can't see the small picture. It is always the big picture with you, Ranma. The small things - people, feelings, motivations - they still escape you most of the time."

"They didn't this time!" Ranma shouted, aggressively. He balled his fists, ready for a fight, but Kaname's hand was gentle on his shoulder, reassuring.

"This isn't your story, Ranma. This is how they deal with your loss. What I have to show you is to help you fix that mistake." Kaname waited until Ranma's fists relaxed. "Let me help you. I am meant to help you." She waited again, until he nodded mutely. "Okay then. Relax. Take my hand. We're going back."

"Back to the past?" Ranma asked, a little dumbly.

"No, silly," Kaname replied with a giggle. "We're going back to the future."

* * *

"Ranma?" Hotaru called from the bedroom. 

"Yes?" Ranma replied, before Kaname's nudge reminded him he couldn't be seen or heard. Damn. For a moment, he'd forgotten, thought this was all some weird and crazy dream. These transitions were almost like waking up. Nothing, then a sudden rush of noise, of light, awareness.

"Dummy," Kaname reminded him with a sigh.

"You're the dummy!" Ranma rounded on Kaname, returning to instinct for a second before he realised what she was doing. What she was still doing. The faint, knowing smile remained on her lips that told him she was still bringing him back so he could adjust and deal with the situation. With that realisation, he reigned himself in again and promised **not** to make such a scene again.

Well, until the next time, at least. This was... most disconcerting, to put it mildly.

"Ranma?" Hotaru called again. Ranma started when she came through the door, her face sagged and aged, hair a pepper colour in her usual bob style.

He turned his face to Kaname, but kept his eyes on Hotaru as she limped through the hall for the bathroom. "What happened to her?" Kaname's response was a silent grin.

Ranma, the one from this time, exited the bathroom. Now in his female form, she looked aged as well. Still a vibrant shock of red hair on her head, the rest of her looked stooped and lined, only the playful light of the eyes really showing any sign of youth. "Ahhh, you go ahead, Hotaru. I'm only going to the shops today. Ya know, more noodles. More and more seem to be disappearin' all the time." 

She started down the hall for what Ranma guessed was the lounge, then almost as she reached Ranma, she started, and straightened up tall, shocked. Staring at Ranma. Lost in memories. A hand reached up, hesitantly, and then her eyes closed, and she _felt_, and to Ranma, he could see almost visible lines of concentration and ki branching out from the older version of himself.

"What -?" he said, taking a reflexive step back. Again, he turned to Kaname. "He can't see me, can he?"

Kaname shook her head. "No, he can't _see_ you." She gave the older Ranma a knowing look. "He can _remember_ you, though, I'd bet."

As if on cue, the older Ranma sagged again, lifting her hand to her head. "Today. Today was the day... it was today."

"Ranma?" came the querying voice from the bathroom. When no response came after a minute, Hotaru poked her head from the doorway and enquired again, "Ranma?" 

She remained there, hand on her head. Gradually, it shifted to behind her head, and she scratched it as she turned around to face her partner. It was a habit Ranma recognised; she was lying to Hotaru. "Ah... nothing, Hotaru-chan. Just go back to your... your... routine. I gotta go out. I... I gotta go see someone today." 

"Akane?"

"Yeah. Who'd you -?" 

Hotaru shrugged, for a moment her aged form not seeming so old. Ranma could almost see the young, wan girl still inside her body. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was just faking, some kind of protection so people wouldn't ask questions about why their neighbours were still so young. "She's the last one, isn't she? Who else would you be going to see?" Hotaru paused, and both Ranmas could see Saturn inside her. "It's today, isn't it?" 

"Now, Hotaru, I don't know that," Ranma countered defensively, but she knew the senshi of death and rebirth often knew more than she did about this kind of thing.

This time, it was Saturn who shrugged. "If it's not today, then, remind her we have a spare room. She'll need one shortly." She disappeared again, leaving Ranma alone in the hall.

She sighed, and headed out the door. With gentle urging, Kaname ushered Ranma out of the door after her. They followed Ranma for several blocks, as she exchanged quiet words with people on the street. Ranma hung back, with Kaname, almost nervous. His heart was beating rapidly, as if he knew he shouldn't be here, shouldn't be seeing this. This was Tokyo, obviously - the land still lay the same, but the buildings were all wrong. And towards the city itself, huge metal spires rose with self-construction rigs rising up incrementally as they built. Other huge towers rose, and one, incredibly thin, rose far up into the clouds. Ranma couldn't see the end of it, but it seemed to give the air a barely perceptible background hum, and small dots rose up and down the line. Ranma guessed it was an elevator shaft, but where to, he didn't know.

Eventually, the future Ranma looked up at a street sign and sighed. She stopped, waved as if for someone to come up to meet her. Ranma looked around, but could see no one behind them. Kaname gave him a push forward. "I'll be back here. I think she wants a private conversation."

Ranma managed not to look surprised as he skipped forward to his future self, who began walking as soon as he arrived at her side.

"Now," she began, "before you say anything, I can't hear you. I can't see you. I can... feel you. Kinda. But... more than that... I remember being here. Kaname's there too, right?" She gave a half-hearted wave over her shoulder. Ranma glanced back, saw Kaname return a grumpy wave. "She's angry at me. Because I'm gonna tell you some things you're not meant ta know."

"What kind of things?" Ranma asked, then kicked himself as he remembered his future self couldn't hear him. Yet, she smiled, amused, and Ranma thought maybe she remembered the reaction more than the words.

"I did tell ya," she reminded him. "Today's a sad day. Akane dies. Last of the Tendo sisters. Why Kasumi died, I dunno. Maybe she thought it was her time, or maybe she faked her death. I don't know. To my dying day, I'll never understand her." Ranma sighed, looked around the suburb as they continued to walk. "Ya know what's missing? Think about it."

Ranma thought about it. Something was missing? He shot a confused, enquiring glance back at Kaname. Although she had dropped right back, Ranma felt she still knew everything that was going on. Maybe that was part of being a guardian angel. But it was a question directed at him, so he thought. What was missing?

So far, no woman had doused his future self with cold water. No bike had smashed down on his future self's head, nor had chains wrapped themselves around him, nor had he been besieged by frustrated senshi or Dark Kingdom monsters. What was wrong? Now that he was thinking about it, something did seem wrong. And it was very unsettling. But, still, it remained elusive.

He reached out with his senses, eyes shut, relying on sensing energy patterns to guide his footsteps. He felt rather than saw the elder Ranma smile, he felt the people in their houses go about their cleaning, their lovemaking, their studying, their lives. And further afield, he felt... no, that was wrong. He frowned, pulled his attention in close. What was it?

People, living their lives, going about their business. But... the sense of it was wrong. His frown grew deeper. The elder Ranma's smile grew sadder. People rushed. People hurried. People took little enjoyment in what they did. And the children...

... were exactly like their parents. There was no play, no laughter, no joy, no sorrow. Just conformity. People grown in a meatgrinder of a society where everyone had no need to be forced into a round hole because everyone _was already round_. He shivered in spite of himself.

"I see ya found it," Ranma began speaking again. "No life. But this was the choice. This was always the choice. People... people can't be forced inta something. They have to _choose_. Choice is everything. Choice... is all that makes living worthwhile. Right now, you got a choice. You have your plan, the one you were planning while trapped in that computer simulation of Tokyo. But you also got the choice not to go ahead with it. I know what choice I picked. If you're here, I know what choice you pick. But the thing is... _you don't have to_."

"But... if I don't do this," Ranma said, his voice unsteady as he felt his future self already knew the outcome of his simple plotting, "if I don't do this, things could be worse!"

Ranma grinned, something the young man was certain others saw on his face when he knew he had won something. And disturbingly, he felt like he had just lost. "Things could always get worse. But this is ya choice. This is what you decided to make of things. This is... this is the way the world ends. No children, no birds, no bugs, no uncute tomboys belting you about, no Chinese Amazons to fight with, no soul reapers from the spiritual realms to contend with. No more giant robots and Whisperers, no ambushes or giant planet-destroying bombs. No alien invasions, no viruses, no intelligent machines. This is how the world ends." 

There was a pause in the conversation then. Ranma felt that perhaps his older self had become lost in the past, but she hadn't. She turned back to him, looked him in the eyes, and said two words that stayed with Ranma until he came to again in Yoshihiro's throne room.

"No imagination."

* * *

Before Ranma could even form the thought to dodge, a huge metal crate passed through his body, collapsing into a squashed pancake of metal on the wall behind him. Another crate followed, and another. By this time, Ranma was calm again, looking around as Kaname tittered. He zeroed in on a wrenching sound, saw Yoshihiro tearing up another crate he threw at a nearby wall.

"Why, Umiko? Why? We _had_ them! We had them right _where we wanted them_!" 

Beside her master, Umiko looked disappointed. "Think it through. You're good at thinking ahead. Think ahead of this." 

Yoshihiro released his grip on a fifth crate, before slumping back into his throne. Ranma felt it looked like something from a science-fiction movie, a dark grey uncomfortable-looking thing with switches and buttons on the armrests. He closed his eyes dramatically - childlike, Ranma guessed - pressed his forefinger and thumb to either side of the bridge of his nose, and thought. After a couple of minutes, he screwed his eyes up tight. Then he relaxed with a sigh. "No, Umiko, I really can't think of anything earth-shattering that should have stopped me from destroying them then and there. I could have defeated all of Tokyo's heroes. All of them! Think of it, no more interference in Hokkaido with our terraforming plans! No more magic cards defeating my strongest monsters! No more psychotic martial artists confusing my best tacticians or school reforms! No more combat androids foiling my schemes. No more schoolyard detectives uncovering my latest safe houses. No more failed ballroom dancers in a top hat saving the heroes I just defeated! And most of all, no more Sailor Senshi to oppose my drive to bring the Dark Kingdom back to life. No. No, you know, nothing could have been worth that."

Umiko sighed, ran a finger down Yoshihiro's arm thoughtfully. "It's only the glimmering of an idea, but we still need human help."

"We need human energy -" 

"Yes, and the best way to get that is for them to offer it willingly," Umiko sounded annoyed and swatted Yoshihiro's shoulder before walking a few steps away.

"Are we... are we listening in on their plans?" Ranma asked, dumbly.

"Shhh. Yes," replied Kaname.

"Wow. This would have been helpful, oh, six months ago."

"Maybe. But I didn't exist six months ago. Now shhh and listen."

"But you can travel in time. You said you died two hundred years ago, but it's not even been a day! So you can do the time travel thing, like Hotaru says that Pluto woman can do, an' you're a guardian angel-kinda thing, so why don't you do some proper guardianing?" 

Kaname smiled and touched a finger to the fuming Ranma's lips. "Shh. This is helpful. This is **all** helpful. So be quiet and listen in on the plans, like a good little good guy who's just been let in on the most powerful secret of the universe: that bad guys like their all-important plans being listened to." 

"He doesn't know -"

"All bad guys assume people are listening, even if it's only themselves." 

Ranma turned back to look, just as Umiko left the room, obviously having finished giving her information to Yoshihiro. She looked slightly smug, like a cat that had just eaten a fairly large canary. Ranma shuddered as she gave an almost silent "nyao" passing him. He glanced at Yoshihiro, who looked to be deep in thought.

"A glimmering, indeed. A time of devastation, a time of darkness, a time of despair... who will lead the recovery of Japan? I have already started down this path... with the charade continuing a little longer, I can regain my strength. I can rebuild my powerbase. I can gain the time I need to build the energy again to unseal our homeworld that Queen Serenity locked from our grasp with her death, and then..." Yoshihiro seemed to deflate. "And then..." he tried once more, but there was nothing. What was he to do? Once he'd retreived his homeworld, or his psyche's homeworld rather, seeing his body was of a more local origin, what else was there for him to do? Once it was joined with Earth, would the Dark Kingdom have farms? Boats? Water? Resources? Or would he rest on his laurels, smirking forevermore, knowing he had achieved what so many others had failed, waiting on his throne until the dark someone bigger and stronger came along and took his throne from him. What would become of him once he had completed his task? After a moment of pondering, he shook his head. "It is no matter. All that concerns us is victory. The queen is dead; long live the King." 

Ranma stared. "Why's he doing this, then?"

Kaname shook her head. "He's acting on thoughts and impulses a million years old. Queen Serenity, Sailor Moon's mother, sealed their dimension from access and life in the endgame of a billion-year war. It was her final act."

"She gave her life for -" 

"Nothing so noble," Kaname sighed, turning to face Ranma. "She'd started the war by believing to know what was best for everyone, and when she lost, she made one final act to make sure she wasn't the only loser. Mutually assured destruction. They hurt me, I damn well sure hurt them back. A final, irrevocable act that has led to thousands of years of brutality on both sides. And now, Sailor Moon has awoken - who unlike her mother, loves all equally - and this is the new endgame. There's a thousand years of pain coming that only she can end, but that thousand years is needed. Serenity was a good person; Neo Queen Serenity - Sailor Moon - is better. But people have to have choice. And to have choice, they have to be fully informed on the options. And the education... isn't nice. Remember yourself in the future? That world?" She waited until Ranma nodded slowly. "That's the first step. That's what happens inside a dead people."

"Oh." A thought struck Ranma. "So... why are ya telling me this? If choice is the important thing, shouldn't people have the choice ta follow Queen Sailor Moon instead of you obviously pushing me ta make people pick that future?"

"Ranma, you idiot," Kaname rolled her eyes, "The people _do_ pick Sailor Moon... in the **future**. The **far** future. Not now, not next week, and that's what she's planning right now. If she sets up her Crystal Tokyo right now, it'll fall apart. She has to wait until everything is ready."

"Oh." A thought struck Ranma. "But then hasn't happened yet, so that choice hasn't been made. So... again, you're showing me this so I can what? Push people to make the decision that was set?"

"Of course not," Kaname replied a little indignantly. "But time... isn't as flexible as you'd think. There's lots of ways through it, but... think of it as a computer game. You can go through a level multiple ways, but you're still limited to a linear progression of story. The plot is the same, but the path to the major points of the plot, where it is set in stone, are different." She paused, and looked around the throne room before dropping her gaze and sighing. She took Ranma's hand. "I'll show you."

* * *

They appeared in a city. It was dark, lit only by flickering neon signs reflecting off a thick layer of smog. "This is one possible version of the future time when everything goes to hell. You've seen yours," Kaname reminded Ranma with a glance. "This is... another path. Instead of building upwards, the human race built outwards. The planet is now one giant city. The eco system can't support itself anymore. The atmosphere is toxic to humans, and the planet is about to shut itself down completely, and seal the population into stasis. They'll be woken again in about 900 years."

* * *

This time, they appeared in a field. Nearby, cows chewed lazily on their cud. Ranma looked up, and saw clouds forming a giant ring. Rain started to fall, but this turned to snowflakes rapidly. He looked at Kaname. "Greenhouse gas emissions have caused runaway global warming. This is the middle of December, in southern Canada. This is now pastoral land, and cattle are raised here. Several weeks ago, the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic shifted over a thousand kilometres to the south due to huge amounts of fresh meltwater being released from the Arctic." As she spoke, the apparent temperature dropped dramatically. The cows barely had time to lift their heads before ice plastered their coats of short fur and turned their eyes glassy. They died in a matter of seconds, snap-frozen from the outside in. "Storms like this, hitting rapidly, but not so much with rain as they are with snow, sleet, hail, and snap-freezing everything it touches. This ice age will last 950 years."

* * *

They appeared in a city again, but this time it was under siege. Giant tripod machines stood their ground and fired on defenders, humans Ranma could almost recognise. They were obviously American, wearing funny costumes and firing energy blasts, using super-strength. It was almost enough. Kaname gestured at an angry man with glowing red eyes and a black shirt that had a giant red 'W' emblazoned across it. As she spoke, he disappeared in a flash of light, disorienting the last of the heroes. They were vapourised by energy blasts. "This is the so-called 'war of the worlds'," she continued. "Man's last gasp against the Martian invaders. Their greatest remaining hero, their last best hope, kidnapped across the solar system at the critical moment. By the time he returned, the Earth was devastated, the heroes dead, the population dead or in hiding. He left. The occupation will last roughly 980 years."

* * *

"This is the way the world ends," Kaname said again, gesturing at the tidal wave that wiped out Sapporo, the last remaining city on the planet.

"Not with a wimper, but with a bang," she continued, as a giant of light exploded in Antarctica.

A pink giant blew up the planet as a final gesture of angry defiance. "Always with a bang. Anything less, and serious change could not be affected."

"And serious change is needed for the human race to continue to survive." Giant monsters, like something from a horror movie, swarmed over tanks and armoured giant robots.

"Because the balance is needed again," Kaname continued, casually stepping around a young man, struggling to control his body as his arm pulsed, grew, absorbed walls and people.

"This balance was lost when the Moon and Dark Kingdoms fought," she explained as Ranma followed, dodging blue-haired succubi and heavily-furred wolfmen, "and man learnt to control his environment instead of growing with it and within it."

The giant red artifact that reminded Ranma heavily of a star gleamed brightly in Kaname's eyes, although Ranma knew it was behind them, and in the sky. "That balance can never be reached again."

"What must come next," Kaname added thoughtfully, "is a new balance. And that's what the story calls for. That's where all these paths lead. Balance. Around 3000AD. That's when things get better. That's when the new balance is created." Above them, a cackling General Ranma didn't recognise gestured, and froze the people around them into crystals, forever to be frozen...

Ranma placed his hand on one of the crystals, amazed he could almost touch it. If he wavered in his concentration, his hand did begin to sink through the crystal, and Kaname smiled. "He's not dead," Ranma said of the occupant. "He's still alive." He looked around at the field of crystals, realised that just here were several hundred people. He could sense more people. More, everywhere, frozen in this instant of time. "They're all still alive," he said, glancing at Kaname for confirmation.

"Yes, they are. Sleeping, waiting for the time they are awoken." Kaname's hand trailed over one crystal, then another. "And the one who wakes them -"

"Is Sailor Moon," Ranma completed. "I kinda guessed that was where you were goin' with this." He looked around, and found himself somewhere else.

* * *

Hotaru's face was turned to the ground, but she walked. She was in Nerima, Ranma recognised the streets. Obviously, she was headed for the Tendo's house. His stomach dropped, but he gulped and watched. Kaname watched too, but not Hotaru. No, she was watching Ranma.

Hesitantly, he stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around her body. He couldn't touch her, but he could try and give her comfort. Her eyes held no tears, but Ranma saw more of the eternal guardian of silence in her expression than the young grieving girl. As his hands closed in front of her chest, she stopped, and her head snapped up, a surprised expression on her face. Ranma laid a kiss on the top of her head, and Hotaru's eyes grew larger. A hand crept towards where Ranma's were, but he let her go, stepped away from her and she stopped again, unable to feel even the smallest presence again. Alone, she cried, giving voice to her grief for a few scant moments before she wiped her eyes savagely with her arm. Then she continued walking.

"I hate seeing her like this," Ranma said quietly as they followed.

"You hate seeing your friends and loved ones like this," Kaname replied. "Most people do. It's only natural. And your natural instinct when someone you love is hurt this bad is to hold them. Make their pain go away. But pain is... something we learn to deal with. Something we learn to live with."

"That doesn't make it right, though," Ranma muttered in reply. He was surprised a moment later when Kuno walked through him, a man on a mission headed directly for Hotaru. His momentary surprise gave way to concern, then angry reaction. "Hey, wait just a sec, Kuno -" he said out loud, before pausing and looking to Kaname, who was stifling a laugh.

"Idiot, you're dead," she chuckled.

Kuno's hand reached for Hotaru's shoulder, but she tensed up before he could announce himself, and she turned to see him, one hand resting on his bokken. 

"These early hours before school times are not a safe time for a Goddess such as your fair self to be traversing through," he said. "For there are many dangers that -"

The rest of his words were cut off as a thick bicycle wheel impacted onto his skull. Kuno went down like a lead weight, chin-first into the road. The bike, on the other hand, bounced back up, then landed in front of him. Ranma jumped back in surprise; he hadn't expected this, either. Kaname started, but quickly regained her composure.

"Was it always like this?" Kaname asked.

Ranma grinned. "No," he replied. "More like this."

"Aiya! Stupid speech-boy get out of Shampoo's way! Shampoo -" didn't get to finish her sentence. A chain whistled through Kaname's chest this time, but Shampoo turned back to face them as she caught the chain. Hotaru stood still in muted surprise. Shampoo gave a yank on the chain, and Mousse stumbled through Kaname as well.

"Wah! Shampoo! Do not run from the fates of love!"

A foot slammed down on one pedal of Shampoo's bike, then the other slammed down on the other side, and so on as Shampoo pumped her legs hard. From an almost standing start, she exploded away from Kuno's prone body. "Shampoo not running! Shampoo biking! Very fast!" 

The chain still extending from his hand towards Shampoo, Mousse tried again. "Shampoo! The Amazon Elders have confirmed it!"

"Here it comes," Ranma predicted. Sure enough, Mousse didn't catch the casual flick Shampoo gave the pursuing chain with her back bike wheel, nor the sudden slackness in the chain whistling through his fingertips.

"We must mar-" he managed before the chain whipped back around his neck and pulled tight. It choked him suddenly, and he fell to the ground, gasping and clutching for the chain to try and loosen it. Ranma looked around with a smirk for Hotaru, to see her reaction - she'd been part of this for a while, and had survived, and he wanted to know what she felt about it.

Instead, Hotaru was already moving, and walking again at a steady pace for the Tendo's. Ranma's heart sank; whenever he managed to get over dying, even only temporarily as this encounter had managed for him, something snapped him back to the moment of his death, and the fact he was now dead. 

As Kaname had hinted, he didn't think it was permanent. It didn't feel permanent, but he wasn't sure what he was feeling. Like... something powerful. Something ancient. Something new.

But Ranma wasn't the only one who had noticed Hotaru leaving. Barring Kuno, still twitching on the ground, and Mousse, who's face was turning a dark shade of blue and could be forgiven for not paying attention by way of suffocation, Shampoo's eyes followed the younger woman as she continued to walk. Recognition of a form appeared in the Chinese woman's eyes as Ranma guessed she remembered her from near-death experiences, and she also realised in what direction Hotaru was travelling in. She pedalled more slowly after her. "Why strange girl go see Tendo's?"

Hotaru didn't miss a stride, nor did her voice crack. Perversely, Ranma was proud. Kaname stood just behind him, a presence that Ranma could feel. She felt... strange. Urgent. Like time was growing short, or something.

"Gather your friends," was all Hotaru said. "All of them. Everyone who knew Ranma. Get them to the Tendo Dojo before I get there." 

Shampoo pedalled alongside Hotaru, and glanced at her face. Something struck her there, it wasn't the soft face she had expected from the younger girl - even with the stories great-grandmother had told her, and her own experiences at this girl's companions, and knowing what she had done to Furinkan High School, Shampoo didn't get all-time evil vibes off her - but something was wrong. Something was missing. And that something was -

Oh no. A chill passed through Shampoo's heart. Not being able to see the dead, she didn't realise that was Ranma trying to lay a hand on her shoulder to console her but had passed through her completely, but she realised what it meant all the same. Without a second glance, she wheeled her bike around and sped off furiously as directed.

Ranma watched the Chinese warrior leave, then turned back to Hotaru, who continued to walk in a slow, steady pace. Almost a zombie herself, he thought, before leaning forward. "Hotaru?"

"She can't hear you," Kaname said from behind. "No one can hear you." 

"I can hear me," Ranma shot back over his shoulder. "Hotaru... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got into this. I'm sorry I'm gone, and I'm sorry it's you left ta pick it up. I didn' want this ta happen. I wanted us ta grow old together and die together, or whatever it is us senshi do when we get old like Mitsuki, and I wanted there to be a big battle for us to become legends, and I wanted us to have children - children we'd keep the hell away from Chinese training trips or my father. And, I'm sure, we're gonna get the chance to do all that. I can kinda see it, and I can kinda see you... and it's like I'm real, too. Alive. But... not yet. I'm..." Ranma grasped for words, but found nothing that described his current predicament with his usual blunt style, and so at the risk of sounding like Kuno, he finished, "in between breaths. Wait for me. Wait for me, and we'll make this all right."

He leaned down right next to Hotaru's ear, and whispered so Kaname couldn't hear: "We're gonna make this right, you and me." 

And then, again, they were gone.

* * *

The first thing Ranma heard, before light exploded into his eyes again, was the complete lack of birdsong. The first thing he felt was the sense of a world more dead than he. The next thing he saw was himself - that is, his future self. Kaname hung back, gestured him forward. "This is something... something you're going to need to see and hear. I personally don't _want_ you to see or hear it, but Yggdrasil says you do. So... go on in." 

"What about you?" Ranma asked.

Kaname waved him off. "I'm staying out here. That older you gives me the willies. He reminds me... of how Cologne reminds you: someone who knows the angles and the game better than you do. And in this case, I'll give him that: he's lived it before, but this is my first time here. So," and she made waving gestures with her hands, "shoo. Go listen. Go watch. And say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" 

"Goodbye," Kaname said firmly, but strangely sadly. 

Ranma scratched his head in confusion, then turned to see his future self admitted by a silver-haired woman with a stoop. A shock of recognition hit him - this was Akane. Akane! He stepped forward, and followed the two through the house to the side porch. Surprisingly, little had changed that Ranma could see. There was even an unfinished game of shogi on the porch still, and Akane sat one side, the older Ranma the other. There they sat for a long time, until Ranma had nearly given up on them saying anything.

Then, Akane turned and regarded his future self for a time. Eventually, the future Ranma noticed, and turned to Akane with a sad look.

"It has been a while since we were all last together," Ranma said. 

"Those of us that remain," Akane reminded her. 

Ranma's faint smile suggested she knew something Akane didn't. The other didn't push her for more information. "Yes," Ranma said, and fell silent again. The young Ranma thought he detected a flicker of fire from Akane about something, but it was gone before he could recognise it.

Again, the two old women were silent. Akane broke the silence this time. "What does the future hold for us?"

Ranma was silent while she thought. "The future... ah, my old, dear friend. We won't be around to see it. Well, much of it," she amended. "And you should be glad of that. This world we live in now," a wave of her arm encompassed the city growing ever higher to the north of the household, where the younger Ranma again noticed those strange elevators to nowhere, before Ranma continued. "Will get worse." 

"Maybe you made the wrong choice," Akane suggested slowly. Young Ranma's ears perked up and he leaned forward as Akane continued. "You know, about what you said to that Setsuna girl." 

"What choice was that?" the young version of Ranma asked Kaname behind him, before remembering she was back inside the house.

The elder Ranma shook her head. "Nope. That we're all sure of. Perfect peace and happiness?" She waved a hand at NeoTokyo, rising beyond the Ward, "Must be fought for. Mistakes must be made for us to learn." She cast a significant glance at the young Ranma again, which gave him chills. She couldn't see him; she could remember him. "I learnt a lot from her friends." 

"I remember," Akane replied, turning to face the rising sun again.

The elder Ranma gave a smirk. "All you remember of that time was how I hurt you."

"I remember more than that," Akane replied, testily. In her words, Ranma heard the fire he remembered and knew, but now tempered by age and wisdom. "I... I just... it has been a while." 

"Indeed." And with that, the two fell silent. After a few moments, Ranma felt the world shift under his feet, and a pulse of geomagnetic energy ran under his feet, zooming in the direction of Kawaguchi. A moment later, there was a belch of flame on the horizon, orange tongues licking at the sky. Ranma noticed his elder version had her head cocked to one side, and a few seconds later, there was a low rumbling sound moving through the air and ground. That felt more scary than feeling the planet beneath him cry out.

"The planet can't take much more of this," Ranma's elder version said after a few moments.

"The overpopulation?" Akane asked.

"Everything," Ranma replied with a sigh. "It is going off like that even more often now than before. Thankfully, people are beginning to notice." She gave her younger version another significant look over her shoulder. "But too slow." 

The two woman nodded sagely, as if this was something they had talked about often, and were in complete agreement, and then the redhead glanced down between them at the shogi board. It remained as it had the day their fathers had died, old, tired, arguing over one last substitution of pieces. The final move was captured, a snapshot of time, in the positions of pieces. And as old and weathered as the board and pieces now were, they remained as they had at the moment their hearts had given out. Breaking the rules, Ranma reached down and picked up one of the pieces seemingly at random. It twirled in her fingers before she stopped it, facing her younger counterpart: a king. "If only they'd taken up another hobby. Something less dangerous. Like playing tennis with live grenades or something." She smirked again.

"I know how you feel," Akane said quietly. "It like they both should still be here. I feel them sometimes. My abilities are lapsing as I grow older. I can barely pick up a ki signature now, let alone differentiate them. And I feel them from time to time. ... I feel all of them." She fell silent again, thinking of times past and friends lost.

As if to remind her of that, Ranma said, "You're the last now, Akane." 

"I'm so lonely, Ranma. I'm the third one."

With thought and feeling, and a concerned look, the older Ranma replaced the playing piece on the board before sliding across the edge of the porch to sit up against Akane and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. The younger Ranma saw something go out of them then, Akane deflating into Ranma as the redhead drew her into a hug. With a start, Ranma realised she was scared. "You're very welcome to come stay with Hotaru and I, you know. We'd love to have you." But both Ranma's knew that wasn't going to happen, and the young Ranma was sure Akane knew it as well. She wasn't scared of the flames still licking at the horizon; she was scared of being the last Tendo for only a little while more.

"you've hard about the dojo, then." A game attempt at steering the conversation away from more morbid concerns.

"The demolishing? Yeah. Come on, our place is always yours. You know that."

"Ranma?" Akane looked up now, eyes glistening at the corners. "Ranma?" she repeated, a little more urgently. "Can you tell me a story?" 

Kaname touched Ranma's shoulder. "It's time to go now," she said. Seeing Ranma's saddened expression, she softened a little. "We'll be back. We're coming back to say goodbye. Or, rather, you are." She led him back into the house.

"It's time to go. For now, at least." And the world snapped back into black again.

* * *

And reformed scant heartbeats later in the training hall of the Tendo dojo. Ranma gave a low whistle looking around, everyone he'd known from Nerima, China, anyone from any training trip he cared to remember that had found their way to Nerima was gathered in this one room. And yet, it seemed like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for someone to say something. He turned, and at the back of the hall stood Hotaru. Somehow, as short as she was, she seemed to tower over everyone.

Towards Hotaru, Akane sank to her knees in grief. Ryoga gave a momentary smile and his eyes opened as whatever Hotaru had just said hadn't sunk completely in yet, and once it had, his face fell and his gaze turned to Akane, while Akari beside him patted his hand. Kodachi Kuno let out a loud wail before collapsing into broken sobbing on her brother Tatewaki's arm, while Kuno himself took a deep breath and made some internal decision. Ranma noticed Hotaru start threading her way through the crowd, and checked where she was heading: the Amazons.

Shampoo gave a simple nod; Hotaru had obviously confirmed what she had thought earlier, but while she conforted Ukyou, Hotaru stopped in front of Cologne. When the elder's eyes opened next, she saw Hotaru in her face, wearing her best Saturn expression. "We will talk. Soon." To Ranma, it sounded like less of a promise, than a threat. He turned to Kaname.

"Why are we here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Kaname replied. "For me, it was a glitch of a computer system brought about by Baku. For you... well, you don't need the mental scarring of seeing your parents do the nasty on the porch, do you?"

"... that wasn't what I meant," Ranma replied, blushing and recoiling as he obviously now had the image imprinted in his mind. "Hotaru's just told everyone I'm dead, right?" As he spoke, Hotaru walked through him, and she shuddered almost imperceptibly, before continuing on to speak to Ranma's mother. Ranma's eyes become unfocussed and shifted from Kaname to Nodoka.

"Ranma? Yes, Ranma?" Kaname asked, making sure she had Ramna's attention again.

"It's just that... why are we here? No jokes," he added. "I don' see the point at all! You're saying you're trying to help me and guide me, but you're showing me my friends, my future self seems ta be helping more than you!"

Kaname smiled slightly. "And yet, he's telling you what he wants you to know, so you make his decisions. I'm the one showing you what your friends think of you." 

That pulled Ranma up short. "What?"

"You just died cheating on your girlfriend. She's okay with that. She's kept that from your friends - and that's what these people are." Kaname gestured around the room, where Happosai was coming to terms with the fact there'd be no more female Ranma to play with, where his father was crying and his mother was patting his back, where Ukyou was staring at a spatula over Shampoo's shoulder, where Shampoo was trying not to cry and Mousse trying not to hover too obviously. 

Kodachi was quieter now, but still sniffling. Her brother still had his arms around her, and as Ranma watched, he led her from the dojo. "But it's still not faiiiir!" Kodachi wailed. "This is cheating!" Kuno shushed her with uncommon quiet dignity as they walked past.

Miss Hinako stopped by Genma and Nodoka and exchanged some quiet words with them. Ranma heard the word "delinquint" come up more times than he cared for, but the diminutive teacher failed to lambast him completely now he was gone. Somehow, that affected him deeper than Akane's reaction. It seemed... like a serious discontinuation of his life, his existance. Without recognising the problems he'd caused or, more often, identified wrongly as the cause of, people seemed to be talking and feeling about someone else, not him.

He guessed, deep down, that they were thinking about someone else. Another Ranma, one who was some god among normal men. Kaname touched him lightly on the shoulder, reminding him she was there. The entire moment was surreal, the sadness palpable. It was too much. Too many people grieving. He had to comfort them, he had to be there for them, he had to do _SOMETHING_...!

And as one, everyone in the room started, glanced up and around, and then began swinging their heads around in Ranma's direction. Ranma jerked in surprise. Kaname shook her head, then whacked Ranma around the back of his. "It's not time yet, dummy."

"What?"

"The whole 'coming back to life' thing. It's not time," Kaname repeated. Then, a little slower as if explaining to a two year old, "You have to make an entrance."

"And stopping my friends and family from being sad isn't an entrance enough?" Ranma asked, disbelievingly.

Kaname shook her head. "You still have things to do before I can let you do that," she reminded him. "Akane's dying, remember? I did say you'd see her before you left. So," Kaname continued, taking his hand in hers, "let's go do that."

* * *

A rough push from Kaname between his shoulder blades told Ranma they'd arrived. In front of him, reacting again from memory, was his future self recoiling in surprise.

"Deja vu," she whispered, her eyes seeming to focus where Ranma was at that time, but again, not really seeing him. Seeing where he stood some decades before. It was weird, and Ranma felt a sense of dislocation sweep over him. Then the future Ranma teared up, stepped around where Ranma stood, and shot out of the house before any sobs became audible.

For a moment, Ranma wondered at that, but then realised that of course, she had been through this. She had seen what he was about to see... Akane, his first true love, die.

At that moment, it hit him in his heart, and Ranma sagged heavily under the weight of knowing someone was about to die before their time. It **had** to be before Akane's time... he was still here, still young. Surely, if he found a way to stay young in the future, he'd have told her, surely he'd have kept her young also.

But then rationality caught up to emotion, and Ranma realised if it was something he could have done, yes, he would. So while his life would have been building to this point, knowing what was coming, dreading the day he saw Akane Tendo that one last precious time before she slipped away forever, he would also have been impotent in the knowledge there was nothing he could do to fight the old age that was crippling her.

One last time.

Kaname had said she was bringing Ranma here one last time. To see Akane before she died, he assumed, but Ranma was dead himself. Or, more accurately, in between one metaphorical breath and the next.

He steeled himself, put on a smile and a happy face, and stepped out onto the porch. Akane sat there, still, so very very still. Ranma crouched down, watched her suck in one last breath, and then heard the dry uncontrolled rasp as it hissed from her mouth. At that precise moment, her presence swelled from near dead to the vibrant energetic dynamo he remembered from only a year or so before, before things had gotten complicated. 

As if noticing Ranma's ki for the first time, Akane started, and turned around, surprise on her face. But it wasn't the old Akane; Ranma noticed with a small dose of weirdness that this Akane was younger, but still not quite as he remembered. She seemed almost to flow from the elder as she moved. "Ranma?" she asked, confused. Of course; her Ranma had only just left, and looked as old as she had.

"Heya, Akane. How's things?" he asked, putting on the best smile he could. It felt wrong, but it was the best he could manage. He tried not to eye the corpse Akane sitting serenely on the edge of the porch.

"They're not... as good as they used to be," Akane replied, confused. Ranma looked so young... and she hadn't heard him come back... the door was still shut behind him...

"I can see." Ranma swallowed hard. "I know."

"I... know why you're here," Akane said slowly, straightening up. Ranma stood up, also.

"Do you?"

"You're dead, aren't you?" Akane knew. Without looking back. She refused to look back. The confusion melted into wonder as she mentally continued on that train of thought.

"At the moment," Ranma replied, conceeding the point difficultly. "Being dead..." How best to put it? It was temporary, he knew. He'd already seen that. But more than that, he _knew_ how to go back. Maybe it was an artefact from the System, a present from Natsumi, forbidden knowledge from the Cybrid haven of Mercury. Or maybe it was the heritage of being a senshi. Or a Dark General. Perhaps this was all written down somewhere in some arcane manner, his life and movements plotted out far in advance, and this wasn't the conclusion yet... merely an interlude. Maybe this Yggdrasil thing Kaname had spoken of was having a laugh at his expense and still waiting to throw obstructions at him. Maybe he was on television and unaware of it, or a dream, or something completely beyond his understanding. Or maybe he was dead and really knew how to get better. But for the moment? "Well, it's different. You get to like it."

Akane made to nod, then a thought struck her. "I'll get to like it before you do, you mean." 

Perceptive, Ranma thought, and nodded. It was hard enough to admit it to himself, he didn't want to have to admit it to Akane any more than he had to. It was about then that he felt a tug, something metaphysical, and he realised instinctively that it wasn't meant for him... it was meant for someone very close to him. "Sorry, Akane, but it's time."

"Yes," Akane said. 

She made to step past him, but stopped, and touched his hand lightly. With that light touch, he felt what she felt. The tug was love, pure, simple, unadulterated love. That of family. His mind traced through the streamers connecting her to wherever she was going, and he could pick them out. Soun, Nabiki, Shampoo, Kuno, Kasumi, Mousse, Ryoga... that he could feel them almost choked him up. That he could feel their waiting for Akane wrenched him. The life that must have come after he came back to life... but first he had to make it come true. He had to make that future more than a possibility. When he looked up, the years flowed from her, until she was the uncute tomboy he had first met those few short years earlier, a lifetime for her, how she obviously still thought of herself. Strangely, Ranma realised that this image of her had the haircut she'd had forced on her shortly after he and his father arrived in Nerima rather than the long hair she'd been so proud of. Perhaps she'd come to prefer the short bob, maybe it was a memory of better times.

Most likely, that was it.

"I suspected as much," Akane said, not looking him in the eyes. "You... always knew things after that day."

"Yes." 

"And you knew things today." So much unsaid. Yes, of course, Ranma thought. He'd lived it before. He knew, and he knew that Akane had realised the moment the old Ranma had arrived. That love between them, the bond of the closest of friends, she had read him like an open book. They'd had years to hone their feelings, and as martial artists, they could read the unspoken words as well as they could read a billboard.

Ranma didn't trust his voice for the moment, and merely nodded. The urging pulling through her fingers intensified. With his free hand, he gestured to the doors into the house. "Akane - it's time. Your mother, your father... Kasumi, Nabiki... Shampoo... the others. They're all in there, waiting for you."

Akane broke their contact, and stepped towards the door, but before she could reach it, she stopped, whirled around, and stomped back towards him. Her arms wrapped around him, her strong grip surprising Ranma, and her head pressed in close, her warm lips finding his and pushing insistantly, passionately. Ranma responded, her intense passion mirrored by his surprised and bewildered acceptance. After too short a time, she pulled back, and studied her feet intently. "I'm sorry, Ranma," she started, a rapid babble of words spilling forth. "I... had to do that. Once." She looked up, making eye contact with Ranma. "I do love you, you know. I always did. I didn't mean to push you away like I did." 

Before she could continue anymore, Ranma placed a finger on her lips. "Shush. I know, Akane. I love you, too. And now..." he gestured at the door again. "Now... go on. Through the door. Be with your family, where you belong."

Akane nodded, sucked in a deep breath, turned on her heel, and walked through the door with no hesitation. She disappeared from sight, and Ranma started; had her really just heard her say, "and where you belong, too."? Or had he imagined that? But no, there was someone. Someone there. Someone strong, powerful, able to breach the walls from wherever Akane went to wherever Ranma was. Not Kaname, someone else. Someone gentle. A smell ghosted past his nose, something that made his mouth water and his stomach grumble with anticipation.

"...kasumi...?"

Kaname took his elbow, which broke the connection and brought him back to the here and now. "Who? Never mind. Are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" The smell had made Ranma think something.

"To go back." "Back where?" He was strong enough to do what had to be done next.

"Back to your funeral. It's your choice. It's... the pivot point of what comes next." 

"Yeah... let's go back." And he wasn't alone.

He chose life this time.

* * *

Ranma exploded into life, a sphere of ki expanding outwards from his arrival back to life. Instinctively, he knew it had worked. Except he was standing in a garden somewhere. Somewhere, far from where his body was. And where everyone else was. This was... weird. "Kaname?" he asked, looking around. No Kaname.

He could feel crushed flowers beneath his feet. Dirt squishing up between his toes. Birdsong. He was alive.

Ranma leapt high in the air. **He was alive!**

A chill brought him low, though. He felt something evil, something distant. Yoshihiro; the Master. He paused for a moment, then realised he had no choice. Contrary to Kaname's words, he knew what he had done to make that future had been what he had been considering originally. No choice. Just fate.

And destiny.

Ranma preferred to meet his destiny head on... and began running.

* * *

Hotaru turned around, looking for Yoshihiro. She'd seen him at the funeral, standing on the opposite side of the casket from her staring at it with a disbelieving expression on his face. And she found her attention had been shifted from the casket itself, the remains of her... her boyfriend, her sempai, her beloved to be, to this mass of corruption who'd almost stolen Ranma from her once before. Icy cold hatred burned deep in her gut, and then she lost sight of him for a moment at the end of the ceremony, and now he was gone. So she turned around.

He was standing right behind her. 

His sense of presence was overwhelmingly great. Rose-scent assaulted her nostrils with undeniable strength. Up close, his black suit, his white shirt, his tie, his gloves even, all looked as if they had been ironed immaculately. The anger in her belly turned to fear, and Hotaru could feel herself start to shift backwards, but the part of her that was always Saturn grabbed her and made her face him, and another part, just as old as Saturn but more twisted, whispered at her to show no fear or weakness.

Both voices let her glower angrily at his genial smile. "Child, why so down? This is a time of reflecting on the good moments of his passing." An insult. His whole existance was an insult. If Hotaru had been Saturn, she would have struck at him. Even without the strength she possessed as a senshi, the olfactory memory the rose-scent brought up nearly caused her to leap on him and bite him to death.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped.

"Honouring a fallen foe," he replied, shrugging as if this was obvious. 

"That's a lie!" burst from Hotaru's lips before she could stop herself.

"Is it?" Yoshihiro asked. "Or perhaps you'd feel better if I told you I was here making sure he was really dead. You know, because I'm this all-powerful 'bad guy'," he smirked at this point, "and he was the only one of you with perhaps enough power and skill to defeat me." Yoshihiro shrugged again. "Perhaps," he added noncommittally, as if he wasn't sure and was only being polite. "But I really did come to pay my respects to the dead."

"You'd have us all dead, if you had your way!"

"Of course," Yoshihiro sounded affronted at the suggestion it could be any other way. "But it wouldn't be through underhandedness, would it? I don't like all that sneaking about. It's what got Natsumi into trouble in the first place." Yoshihiro paused, and turned towards the casket, a look of sadness sweeping across his face. What was going through his mind, Hotaru wondered somewhere in the red haze that coating her vision. It almost seemed like he was grasping for something. Going through the motions. Not really here at all, but locked somewhere in his head wondering about something other than the obvious - his future, perhaps? "But Ranma is gone now. A pity. I no longer feel I have a challenge here."

Mitsuki was somehow standing right behind Yoshihiro. Or was it Mitsuki? Something seemed different about her. Angrier. Pricklier. Hotaru hadn't seen her move there, but there she was. She'd kept away from the other senshi for the last few days, and had stood to the back of the crowd while the celebrant spoke about Ranma, but now she was there when Hotaru needed her. "A challenge?" Mitsuki spat. The other senshi moved into position in a semi-circle around the Dark Kingdom lord, who turned around to take them in with a suddenly calculating eye. The girls looked angry, angry that Yoshihiro had intruded on their grief and privacy, their day-to-day lives invaded by this alien from the distant past. "All of us together, we're more than a match for you, Dark Kingdom scum!" 

Yoshihiro chuckled, completely unfazed by the bravado and anger boiling off the young woman. Slowly, one by one, the others in the funeral home began turning around, aware something was going on. "Scum?" Yoshihiro asked. "I think not. Royalty, perhaps. Your better? Definitely. Single-minded?" He turned his gaze on Mitsuki now, the confident and mocking smile raising the level of her anger even more. "Of course."

Almost as one, the senshi stepped back. Their hands flicked down as one, and transformation wands dropped from sleeves and pockets into their waiting fingers.

"Truly," Yoshihiro snorted in disbelief, "none of you pose a threat to me whatsoever." 

Behind the senshi, the outside door slammed open. "Oh? Is that so?" asked a familiar voice.

"R... ranma?" Hotaru stammered, staring past Yoshihiro and her friends. The senshi started, and turned as well. Akane's hands rose to her face, which grew bright red.

"I like ta think I'm a little bit more than a threat to ya," Ranma continued, cheekily. "But, ya know, really..." Ranma's voice trailed off as he realised everyone was looking at him. A little embarrassed, he scratched at the back of his head. "Um, yeah, hey everyone. I'm alive again." He opened his eyes, all business again, but realised the senshi weren't quite meeting his eyes.

Neither was anyone else. And the senshi were almost as red in the face as Akane. And it wasn't an _angry_ red, either... Ranma glanced down. "Oh hell, I forgot clothes!" he barked, disappearing from sight while the crowd blinked in shock.

"Oh my," Kasumi said. 

"He's such a... manly man," Nodoka added.

"He takes after his father," Genma smirked.

"Aiyah!" 

"This buffoon of a sorceror has befouled my Goddess for the last time!"

Hotaru continued to blink.

Ranma appeared again about a minute later, dressed in what looked to be a priest's suit, complete with a clothes peg sticking up from one shoulder. "That was embarrassin'..." he muttered.

"No," said Rei in a stunned tone, "Please, any time you feel like wearing no clothes, go ahead." She flinched as Makoto whacked her around the head.

"In a way, I'm kinda glad you're all here," Ranma continued, in a louder voice, trying not to listen to Rei's comments to Makoto. "I got something to say." 

"Do you expect me to stand here and wait?" Yoshihiro asked, pointedly looking at his watch. "Finishing off the senshi... that would have been good. I could have done that already. But I have an appointment to go to shortly, you see, and -" 

"This concerns you, too," Ranma interrupted. "Just gimme a second. This is difficult. I'm not good with words, I'm better with actions." He raised his voice to address everyone again. "Thanks for coming. As you can see, it's now kinda pointless. I'm alive again. Don't ask me how; I did it, I can't explain it. But it was hard to come back. Hard to find reason again to live. I... know a lot more now than I did a few days ago. I seen some things about myself I didn't like at first, until I realised what I had done to make me like that, make me act like I did." 

"Hotaru," he continued, "What I did to you was unforgivable. One day, I hope you'll take me back."

"You know I -" Hotaru started, but Ranma continued speaking as if she hadn't spoken.

"Mitsuki, it's not your fault. I was stupid. I thought you were someone else, but that don't matter. Rei, you need help. Serious help. Makoto, you're gonna make someone a good wife one day. Just don't pick anyone from this room, I'm begging ya. Minako, ..." Ranma searched for words, but found none. "Just keep bein' you. You're not perfect, but no one is, and you're happy. Akane, I guess I never really said it out loud, but I never thought I needed to. I love you. I can't be with you, but I love you, and your trip through life is gonna be great. Usagi..."

Usagi drew herself up with a little pride. The praise Ranma was dishing out was unusual... but so was the pause he gave before continuing.

"If you're not stopped, you're gonna destroy the world. And so..." With an inrush of energy grabbed from anyone and anything nearby, Ranma's body bulked out into his powered-up General form. "Yoshihiro, if I may... I think your plan for world domination is sorely lacking in some finer points. Ya nearly had it the last time. You could have had it all, with no opposition." He saw Yoshihiro flinch. "And ya wanting something to go on with. I can deliver that to you. I can deliver you the world, in the palm of your hand. I can give you the keys to the Dark Moon Kingdom. I can bring your world back for you." 

"What?" Yoshihiro was on the backfoot. This wasn't something he'd expected. "You would rather destroy this world than let this girl destroy it?"

Ranma shrugged, nonchalantly. "If I'm involved, I got some chance at my friends and family surviving. If she's involved, she'll kill everyone on three worlds. Promise me Tokyo, and I'll give you the world." 

He could see Yoshihiro struggling with the concept. His greatest foe, the only person he did truly consider to be a threat to his plans, and he was offering to work with him. And not just work with him, hand him the world. Hand him what he needed to take over, to bring the Dark Kingdom into the light. "This has to be some kind of trick," he said at length.

Minako concurred. "It's not in his heart to kill everything."

"What's in my heart is the best intentions for my family an' friends," Ranma smirked back. "And what's best for them is to keep living. If that's guaranteed, I don't care, particularly if the other option is to let someone destroy the whole world, including the people I love."

"If I agree to save Tokyo, you will work for me?" Yoshihiro asked.

"That's what I'm offering," Ranma replied.

"Ranma!" Makoto started forward, but Hotaru stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

"Makoto," she said, simply, before turning to face Ranma. "Is this what you really want?" Hotaru asked in a quiet voice.

Ranma nodded. "Either let things go as they have, and destroy the world - and be responsible for it - or try and change things, and save some people. It's one or the other, Hotaru-chan. I know where I stand."

HOtaru regarded him with a cold, calculating eye of ages. Eventually, she nodded. "Then when next we meet, we will fight to the death."

"If that's what it means," Ranma nodded also.

"I'm sorry things had to go this way," Hotaru said, quieter.

"There's no other way," Ranma agreed. "There is no other choice." He gestured to the door, and Yoshihiro preceeded him, eyes wary and senses alert. But no attack came. Ranma merely closed the door behind them, and they were gone with a faint popping sound.

Usagi burst into tears. Minako comforted her, while Hotaru and Mitsuki faced each other, Akane joining them moments later.

"Is he really gone?" Mitsuki asked in a quiet voice.

"No," Hotaru said.

"He's still here," Akane added, touching her chest. Hotaru looked at her strangely. "He said it himself. He can't use words very well. He... he says the wrong thing while trying to say what he means. He did it with me a lot. And I'd pretend he meant what he said, or misinterpret... he's good with actions."

"And he's scared," Hotaru interjected.

"Of what?" Mitsuki asked.

"Not of what," Akane replied. "For what. For us. He's doing this for us."

* * *

Umiko eyed Ranma warily from a vantage point behind and slightly above him on the bridge, while Ranma pointed out some ideas to Yoshihiro. The Master was nodding slowly in agreement as he saw where Ranma was coming from.

"This is Japan," Ranma said. "Giant robots, spaceships, monsters - this is what everyone here lives for. You're from here, but you're not from here. It's not somethin' you're gonna understand real easy. But trust me on this. If you need energy, from lots of people, you don't need to keep finding new people, although that can help. You need to farm them." 

"But how would you do that in this situation?" Umiko asked, knowing her Master wouldn't, and would be relying on her to cover his ignorance.

"It's simple," Ranma replied. "You don't _take_ people's energy. With monsters and aliens attacking Japan all the time, all you need to do is get them to _give_ you their energy with their best wishes... and this is how you cultivate this farm..."

**To be continued in the follow-up series "Justice".**

_SAILOR MOON SAYS:_  
Wow. That took a while. Sorry about the wait, there's a bunch of reasons that basically boil down to I've been trying very hard not to use my brain at home to de-stress. Which means I get nothing productive done, which causes the stress I'm trying to avoid. Writing in HTML has been fun, also, mostly because I wanted to avoid the problems I had reformating the chapter last time after finding that had gone HTML and robbed me of my formatting. Hopefully, this will upload correctly and you'll get the chapter as I wrote it again.

It'll also make the posting on my eventual site all the easier ;)

I'm going to be starting Justice shortly. I don't want there to be the big year-long gap between chapters again if I can help it, so I'm going to harangue friends to push me into writing. The first arcs will be fun to write - so what's coming up? Should I spoil it? Nup. That said, the way the series ends is quite visible now. It's been a lot of fun coming back to chapter 1 and realising how well everything fit together. Everything I'd planned for the story had come to pass. And the writing was open enough that I could add in the extra detail of what was going on without changing the pacing of the sections... yay for forward planning.

Thanks for reading. Comments can be left here, or emailed to me at the address in the disclaimer. I hope everyone enjoyed it, bar the four year wait to get through this And I hope to see you, in a figurative sense, next time in Justice. 

Raymond Cooper  
11.21PM, 12.04.06


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